Because Jan Mankes passed away 100 years ago this year, I made this exclusive woodcut for this occasion.
Because I grew up near De Knipe, I came into contact with the work of Jan Mankes early on. Just like then, I am still touched by the delicacy and fragility of his works, his modest use of color. 100 years after his death in 2020, COVID-19 once again demonstrated how acute our vulnerability still is. A vulnerability that Jan Makes also knew well, because he suffered from tuberculosis. I tried to depict this vulnerability in an adaptation of one of my favorite works ‘self-portrait with owl’.
