Jan Holthoff - Hardcover

by Jan Holthoff (Author), Emmanuel Mir (Author), Dirk Lehr (Author)

Jan Holthoff's paintings from the years 2024 and 2025 are presuppositionless; this is where their strength and power lie. Jan Holthoff studied under Gerhard Merz, one of the central artists of postminimalist art, and under Helmut Federle, a painter who conceptualizes painting in a radical way through energetics and formal restraint. In 2008, Jan Holthoff then studied as a master student under Herbert Brandl. The inspirations he gathered from these three led him to his own objective: to renegotiate painting. My painting is gestural, abstract, and processual; its complexity varies, he says. And that is precisely formulated, because whoever walks past these paintings, such as in the exhibition at the Duisburg Cultural Church, from which the photos of the room installations originate, sees that the canvases have nothing serial about them; rather, the 2024 paintings are very reduced, almost contemplative in design, expansive in their combination of color field painting and expressivity. In 2025, Jan Holthoff now shatters this system, works less with transparency, and instead employs individual opaque surfaces that resist the inner chaos like stop signals. This is very good painting,

Author Biography

Jan Holthoff, b. 1977, studied from 1997 to 2001 law at the Heinrich Heine University in Dü sseldorf and made his doctorate from 2002 to 2006. From 2002 to 2008 he studied at the Art Academy Dü sseldorf under Gerhard Merz, Helmut Federle, and Herbert Brandl. 2009 he did several trips to the United States, and maintained a studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn. 2013 he received the Douglas Swan Art Promotion Prize at August Macke House Museum in Bonn. In 2009 and 2010 and 2013 he had shows in New York City and Montreal, Canada, till today his solo shows and groupshow participations. Emmanuel Mir is an independent art historian, author and curator. He teaches at the Essen University of Fine Arts (HBK), and his research focuses on the sociology of art. Dirk Lehr is a Berlin-based art collector, art mediator, freelance author, and writer of non-fiction books and articles on the art market. Dirk Lehr writes for the Financial Times Deutschland and the Berliner Zeitung, among others Robert Fleck was Professor for Art and the Public at the Dü sseldort Art Academy from 2012 to 2025. Fleck directed the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn from 2009 to 2012 and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg from 2004 to 2008. In 2007, he curated the Austrian Pavilion at the Venise Biennale as commissioner and showed Herbert Brandl there. William Helfrecht is an independent curator and critic based in NYC and Cayman Islands. He worked as a staff member of Luhring Augustine gallery in New York City. Helfrecht received his MA in Modern Art from Columbia University.