Kees Salentijn - Screen print, Nina de Vacaciones

Kees Salentijn (Amsterdam, 1947) trained at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, in the Department of Fine Arts. OB Kat was his most important teacher there. During his studies, Salentijn studied paintings at the Prado in Madrid and spent several months with a Berber family in Morocco. In the mid-1970s, he traveled and stayed in Greece, among other places; in 1977, together with the painter Kenne Gregoire, he created the project “The Asparagus Eaters” in Venray. Also in that year, he received a commission for a mural in the municipal office in Venlo. In the 1980s, Salentijn traveled frequently to Spain. During this period, he felt connected to artists of various movements who advocated, more or less, spontaneous, unconscious creation and did not primarily pursue aesthetic representation. In 1983, a large retrospective exhibition of this Spanish trip took place, in which he showed paintings, collages, and drawings under the title “Extremadura.” In 1984, Salentijn stayed in Barcelona and traveled through the Pyrenees and Catalonia. He visited the artist Antoni Tapies and also took an interest in other Spanish painters such as Saura and Millares. The death of the matador Paguiri prompted Salentijn to create his first bullfight (corrida) paintings. In 1985, he brought together a number of works around this theme under the title “Les folies d'Espagne” and exhibited them in Amsterdam. The 'bullfight' had become a metaphor for the battle with the painting. In the late 1980s, Salentijn visited excavations in Ampurias, a Greek/Roman settlement in Spain. He drew inspiration from this for his work. After this, he worked alternately in Venlo and in various friends' studios in Amsterdam. In the early 1990s, he moved into a studio near the capital and began his period of rapid creation. Cohesion, collage, drawing, and painting served as a continuous expression of his creativity.