Peter Klashorst - Numbered screen print from the Cows series

Visual artist Peter Klashorst, born on February 11, 1957, in Santpoort, quickly gained fame after graduating from the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy in 1981. During this period, Klashorst did not focus solely on his painting; he indulged his artistic talents in his punk band Soviet Sex, his own pirate TV station Bizar TV, and his discotheque Bizar-discotheek. Peter Klashorst began his career during the period of Neo-Expressionism in the Netherlands, the "New Wilds." In the mid-eighties, Klashorst's powerful expressive style froze, his canvases became more abstract, colors disappeared, and with his geometric work, he aligned himself with the "neo-geo" movement. In 1987, on Tenerife, he discussed the crisis of modernism with his colleagues Rob Scholte and Jiri Dokoupil: What can you still paint as a painter now that everything has already been painted? Klashorst and Dokoupil argued that painting needed to be reinvented and began reproducing reality, just as painters before modernism had done. Thus, the group After Nature was born, which revived genres such as nudes, landscapes, and still lifes. As a co-initiator of the artist collective After Nature, Klashorst gave a new impetus to Dutch art history. The After Nature group (1987–1995), which included, alongside founder Klashorst, the artists Jurriaan van Hall, Gijs and Aad Donker, Ernst Voss, and Bart Domburg, distanced itself from the prevailing abstract expressionism and caused a sensation in the 1980s and 1990s with an innovative figurative painting style, turning away from the "is-men" in art. Their relationship with subjects and with the public was very direct and devoid of pretension. Their joint performances on the street, in nature, and during art events were both famous and notorious. That "snobbery" and "idealism" were also counted among those to be demolished became apparent when Klashorst subsequently emerged as a portrait painter of "all of Amsterdam" and through his participation in various TV programs: De Sprekende Ezel, Ikon, and Schilderen in acryl met Peter Klashorst, Teleac/NOT. Peter Klashorst (1957) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 1981. The 1980s were a period in which a new movement emerged in Europe: that of the "Wild Painting" artists. Klashorst's painting style was immediately welcomed by this movement. After a number of exuberant and energetic years, Klashorst's powerful expressive style froze. His canvases became abstract and cold, and the colors disappeared. Klashorst's work appeared icy and indifferent.