Gerard Pieter Adolfs

• Name — Gerard Pieter Adolfs • Born — 2 January 1898 • Birthplace — Semarang, Central-Java • Died — 1 February 1968 • Place of death — s'Hertogenbosch, Netherlands • Known for — Painting, Architecture • Illustration — Portrait in 1937

• Illustration — Vogelkoopers (1947) Adolfs spent his youth in Java and received at home his first artistic inspirations. His father, Gerardus Cornelis Adolfs, was an architect and a versatile amateur (painter, photographer, piano and violin player as well as a pole vaulter). Adolfs studied architecture in Amsterdam. After graduating, he was drawn back to Java, where he designed houses in Yogyakarta, Surakarta and Surabaya. But soon he swapped the drawing pen for the dry-point, pencil and brush and from then on dedicated his whole life to painting. He was already well known as a talented advertising illustrator, when in 1924 he was first introduced to the public of Yogyakarta as a painter, water-colourist and graphic artist. Each year Adolfs travelled for a few months. He had studios in Florence, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and - together with his Japanese friend Léonard Tsuguharu Fujita - in Paris and exhibited his works of art internationally (Netherlands Indies, Japan, Singapore, United States, England, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, France, Switzerland…). The main subjects of his work were scenes of Java, Bali, Japan and of North Africa (market sceneries, cock-fights, landscapes and townscapes). In 1940 – shortly before the occupation of the Netherlands – Adolfs came back to Europe and settled in Amsterdam. On 22 February 1944, during an exhibition at the Kunstzaal Pollmann, the largest part of Adolfs' paintings was destroyed by the bombardment of Nijmegen. Adolfs kept on working. He wrote and illustrated a book about his memories of Surabaya and exhibited in many well-known galleries. He lived mostly in Amsterdam - interrupted by longer stays in Scandinavia, France, Spain, Italy and North Africa. In 1967 he retired to a small village in South-Holland. On 1 February 1968, G.P. Adolfs died in 's-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant.