Jan Pater is a Dutch sculptor. After he was rejected for the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1968, Pater became a furniture maker, a nurse and a teacher in Alkmaar. Nevertheless, Pater always remained passionate about sculpture, creating sculptures in his spare time. Only in 1996, Pater got more seriously involved with sculpting and was tutored by many sculptors, such as Piet Vos and Leo van den Bos.
Pater decided to become a professional sculptor at age 50, encouraged by the opportunity to participate in sculpting in Studio Sem in Pietrasanta, Italy, where artists such as César Baldaccini and Joan Miró had worked. Pater still visits the studio yearly to this day.
Pater predominantly works with marble, granite, onyx and gneiss. He works with led, bronze, metal and wood as well. His body of work is versatile and colourful and can be seen at multiple exhibitions and galleries throughout Europe.
STYLE AND INSPIRATION
Jan Pater is a sculptor who does not search, but finds. When he starts working on a sculpture he starts without aim, purely from his feelings to expression, supple and free in interaction with the material. The female torso is his source of inspirations. She gives him the opportunity to combine movement, tension and sequences of surfaces and lines into a combination of recognizability and abstraction.
Jan Pater alternates working in The Netherlands and Italy and exposes among other things in The Netherlands, Belgium and Norway.
