Leo Schatz - Original 1960s Indian ink drawing "man and woman" signed

• Title: "man and woman"
• Year: 1960s
• Dimensions of the sheet: 18 cm x 14 cm (in passe-partout: 35 cm x 25 cm)
• Circulation:
• Signed: Yes, handwritten in ink
• Material: East Indian ink drawing on cardboard
• Framed: in passepartout
• Condition: in good condition.

Leo Schatz grew up in Betondorp. As a boy, he enjoyed drawing, and on the advice of Albert Hahn Jr.—a friend of the Schatz family—Leo was sent to the School of Applied Arts, where he graduated in 1939. He then studied at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. When war broke out, Schatz went into hiding and joined the resistance. His parents and twin brother did not survive the war years.


During the war he went into hiding in The Hague, together with Wim Polak and Bea Biet, with whom he published booklets that were printed to benefit the resistance – simple children's books with titles such as Ankie is jarig (Ankie's Birthday) and 't Arme boertje (The Poor Farmer), which sold in tens of thousands of copies.[1] Schatz forged ration cards and identity cards, and Polak did technical work for the illegal Parool newspaper, while Schatz drew the headlines for that newspaper. His hiding name was Jan Heertjes.


In 1948, he married Sonja Kopuit, who also had a traumatic wartime past. In the years that followed, he earned his living primarily by teaching; in 1969, he became a lecturer at the Minerva Academy in Groningen and the Rietveld Academy in his hometown of Amsterdam.

After the war, Leo taught drawing to very young children. Jeroen de Vries (son of interior architect/industrial designer Coen de Vries) recalls the following: "One of my oldest memories is of me sitting on my father's shoulder, moving through the upper rooms of the Stedelijk Museum; we suddenly pass through a small door and up a flight of stairs, and then I'm delivered to Leo Schatz. Leo was a friend of Coen and Klaasje de Vries, who gave drawing lessons to very young children in the attic of the Stedelijk. It was the idea of Willem Sandberg, director of the Stedelijk. Shortly after the war, Leo Schatz—a former resistance fighter—was invited to Denmark by the Danish government. He befriended several Danish painters and was impressed by the work of the French colorist Pierre Bonnard, whose work he saw there. Back in Amsterdam, he experimented and produced mostly expressionist paintings. He developed his own, highly colorful form of expressionism. Personal tragedy left a significant mark on his work. When his daughter Irma died in 1984, she appeared many times as a shadowy figure in his works. After his wife's sudden death in 2003, the shock left him unable to paint, but he found new expression in his poems and drawings. In 2005, his poetry collection, including these drawings, was published under the title "I Have No Aptitude for Grief." In 2007, director Rudolf van den Berg, in collaboration with Interakt Television Productions and the Jewish Broadcasting Corporation, made a documentary about the life and work of Leo Schatz. On December 1, 2012, Schatz was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his exceptional contributions to painting, art education, and the experience of art. This took place during the presentation of the book "In Elke Hoofd Zit een ander hoofd" (In Every Head Is Another Head) and the opening of the eponymous exhibition at the Jan van der Togt Museum in Amstelveen. The book and exhibition were based on his work from that period.