Yosay Briels

The Dutch Artist and His Muse Yosay Briels

A young Jan Sirks is drawing during class. He is fascinated with the play of light on the face of his history teacher. He knows he will be punished for drawing in class but he does not care. He simply has to draw. Pencils and brushes are a natural extension of the stubborn and highly artistic Rotterdammer. Convention forces him to become an administrator with the Dutch Iron Railway Company but he continues his artistic development. A coal-infused snow landscape leads him to Rembrandt's chiaroscuro and a fascination with etching. His life is transformed when he takes a studio to house his etching press and engages a model. The vivacious pianist Hillegonda, first model, then muse, opens the door to his artistic success. At a jury-free exhibition in Amsterdam, he sees Henri Le Fauconnier's figurative abstract paintings and becomes obsessed with artistic truth. A mind-expanding meditation results in haunting visions and he adds abstraction to his oeuvre of realist industrial etchings of Rotterdam. After buying Blavatsky's Secret Science, he falls into the Theosophy-cushioned world of modern Dutch art and meets many seemingly kindred spirits. With juries, galleries and museums in Rotterdam refusing to exhibit modern art, Jan and his new friends establish the avant-garde art movement De Branding in 1917. With their penciled manifesto, they battle for their right to exhibit in Rotterdam. When dogma disguised as messianic truth sneaks in, Jan has to fight a far more personal battle and decipher what it means to be a modern artist.