Jan Schoenmakers (1923)

Painter and sculptor

Jan H. Schoenmakers was born on January 28, 1923 in Beek Ubbergen as the 3rd child of Anton BA Schoenmakers and Henrica Gaikhorst, who were both teachers. Jan already showed a special talent for drawing at the age of four. This trait developed quickly. In the first grade of primary school he already understood how perspective worked.

He attended primary school in Beek, where his father was a teacher. He even skipped a class, after which he went to the gymnasium of the Canisius College in Nijmegen. However, Jan was not used to doing homework, so he was transferred to the HBS. Here too things did not go so smoothly, so he was sent to the municipal HBS-B on the Kronenburgersingel. He completed his 3 year course there. He had a 10 for drawing. The artistic blood crept where it couldn't go, and instead of finishing school, he registered at 'Kunst Exercise' in Arnhem.

There he was hired in the illustrative drawing department and he was taught by Wim van Woerkom, among others. After 2 years he switched to the sculpture class, where Jan learned the trade in all its facets from Gijs Jacobs van 't Hof. He graduated in 1950.

Jan subsequently established himself as a free artist in Beek, where he had a studio on Rijksstraatweg and later on Hanenberg, where he rented part of an old villa. He made murals for local catering companies, but he also received commissions from schools and companies in the area. He often worked with reinforcing bars for his plastics. Most of the work, however, consisted of paintings of landscapes from the region, which were purchased by the Teunissen-Donders art dealership in Nijmegen.

An important project for Jan was his house on the Waal, according to his own idea and design, which he partly built himself in the floodplains in Lent, directly opposite the skyline of Nijmegen. When it was finished, he married Toos Berns in 1959, whose parental home was next to his. They had 3 children. That meant a regular income was needed. Jan subsequently became a teacher of crafts at the Dominicus College in Nijmegen, for which he obtained an additional diploma.

In the meantime he continued to paint and made commissions for, among others, the tourist office in Beek, from which the well-known 'Wasvrouwtje' emerged in 1984. It is seated on the edge of the pond opposite the town hall. Later, in 1999, the 'Bleekstertje' was added, which is placed near the fountain in the heart of Beek.

On January 26, 2013, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at Hotel 't Spijker in Beek by the 'Vereniging Toerisme Ubbergen' as a thank you for his contribution to the notoriety of Beek Ubbergen.