Currently I am doing biographical research into the life and work of the Surinamese artist Erwin de Vries.

As both a cultural historian and an art-lover I am fascinated by his colourful expressionist paintings, his powerful free-standing sculptures, and his striking sculptural portraits.

A typical feature of De Vries’s art is its association with the human figure. Sexuality became a recurring theme in his work.

It is a challenge for me to interpret his visual work in an art-history context. I also want to examine both his position as an artist and the reception of his art in the Netherlands, where he lived and worked from the 1950s to the early 1980s, and in his native country, the former Dutch colony of Suriname. I will also look at the attention paid to his work in other countries, such as Jamaica, Curaçao, Mexico and the USA. Another question is how, and to what extent, his Surinamese background – which reflects the country’s multiethnic and colonial history – contributed to the development of his work.

My research will result in a biography that will be published in November 2025.

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(Photograph of Erwin de Vries: Ingrid Moesan)

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