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JOHFRA AT THE END OF HIS LIFE
(photo by Jesse Hayes)
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PARIS - SPRING 2003
24 PAGE ARTICLE
INTRODUCTION
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When Johfra died in 1998, he left behind a large oeuvre encompassing almost a thousand finely detailed paintings, thousands of completed drawings, several sketchbooks loaded with preparatory images, and twenty volumes of diaries, written in a fine hand from eighteen years of age to his death at the age of seventy-eight.
Perceiving some kind of order among this complex, organic, ever-evolving body of work is no easy task. The artist’s life invites one possible order, since he shared love, discovery, and the artist’s struggle for survival first with Diana Vandenberg for sixteen years, and then with Ellen Lórien for the remainder of his life. As well, at the age of forty-four, he left Holland and settled permanently in France.
This becomes a starting point. And indeed, the subjects in his works do begin to change, depending upon the woman he lived with and the place where he worked. But more important is a slow evolution in the artist’s view of the world which is evident in the artworks themselves.
Though Johfra was capable of returning, at any time, to all periods of his development, a surprising consistency of style also persists throughout his life’s work. His mastery of line, shading, and figure began at an early age and remained throughout his life.
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