Jan Erftemeijer (1951) studied 1970-1975 at the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague (Netherlands) and 1976-1983 at the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands), where he finished the study History of Art. He is known as teacher in Art-history and Drawing at Fontys Hogescholen (1985-2014) and as artist. His earlier works (mainly woodcuts and etchings) often have a symbolic content. After his retirement as teacher in 2014 he dedicated himself full-time to painting and drawing. He makes many studies in mountains (Picos de Europa in Spain) and at the North-see (the Wadden-eilanden and the beach near The Hague, Netherlands) as well as on the Regte Heide (the region south of the village Goirle where he lives). These studies develop in his oil-paintings into mosaic-like semi-abstract compositions, sometimes on big- sized canvases. These paintings have been regularly shown in exhibitions in the Netherlands. After an interruption during the covid-years, the style of the paintings changes into abstract-geometrical minimalism. In these paintings he returns to smaller- sized canvases. These works have a meditative character and appeal to intuition rather than to reason. At first sight they have almost no symbolic content. There seems to be nothing more than pure form and colour, but these refer in a discrete manner to the essential conditions of existence and to finding inner peace with these conditions. A number of these works were shown for the first time in Prague (Kavárna Lucerna august 2024), in an exhibition together with his son Jacob Erftemeijer who lives in Prague; Jacob is known as actor but is also active as a painter.