Peter Vos - Monochrome Lithograph "Devils caught in the tree" made in 1972

• Cartoonist Peter Vos was the son of Netty Hofland and Cornelis Vos, nicknamed Der Foeks. His father, a journalist and proofreader at the Utrechtse Courant, enjoyed spending time in the pub as much as in literary circles, if that wasn't the same thing. Peter Vos was very attached to his storyteller father and remained involved with him throughout his life.

He attended primary school with the friars in Utrecht and probably drew before he came to school. He came from a literate environment that certainly stimulated his drawing. In any case, he drew remarkably well and a lot in the first grade.
Peter Vos received his first drawing prize before he turned twelve, his first publication was in 1947 in the youth section of the magazine 'De Fontein'.
After completing high school, he finally chose to become an artist in 1953 and went to the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Under the influence of people like GVA Roling, Marthe's father, he developed his love for drawing animals, especially birds, which characterizes his work to this day.
As an illustrator for the Amsterdam student magazine Propria Cures, Peter Vos came into contact with Hugo Brandt Corstius, Joop van Thijn and Rinus Ferdinandusse and in their footsteps he started drawing for Vrij Nederland in 1958, including the lions in the column 'Terzijde' to this day. He also started working for KL Poll's 'Hollands Maandblad' and published his own books such as 'De 100 Reigers', 'Klein Pulcinellenboek voor Anneke', 'Een studie in grijs' and later, in the nineties 'Wat je ook niet vaak zien'.
He feels at home in the realistic tradition and works figuratively because he has a strong love of truth from home. Things must always have a clear relationship with their natural state. He wants to fathom the structure in his work. This applies not only to the birds that come so virtuously from his pen, but also to the looser drawn and sometimes dressed in human clothes other animals. His free work shows his great versatility, his interest in the classics formed during his grammar school education (drawings inspired by Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' among others) and his love for birds.
Peter Vos' work shows that he has always been fascinated by metamorphoses. He draws people and animals, especially birds, with unparalleled craftsmanship and in a lovingly realistic way. He also lets his imagination run wild, in drawings with a mixture of realism, magic and humour. He often draws crossbreeds of animals to non-existent species, for example a black-winged stilt mutation of a house sparrow, and half-human/half-animal figures such as a giraffe woman and a human dog.
Animals play a prominent role in the work of Peter Vos. Whether Vos depicts his animals in a completely serious and naturalistic way or uses them as the subject of a witty cartoon, nature is always the basis. At one point he wanted to become a bird artist, because he had always been incredibly intrigued by how these animals - 'such a side branch of evolution that flutters' - are put together, their basic shape and their skeleton. But the fascinating nature of their rapid motor skills and the unattainable enviable phenomenon of being able to fly, was also one of his driving forces. He observes them in the woods and fields, in zoos, in the city and during bird trips and records them forever in his bird book dummies that also become travel reports. Sparrows remain his favourite birds: 'I love lousy sparrows'. They can also always be found nearby and can be observed and drawn continuously in all their actions. If a bird is not immediately available, he sometimes uses so-called bird bellows: bird carcasses stuffed with straw from the taxonomy department of Artis to see what the coverts and flight feathers of such a bird look like. But he can only get the fast motor skills of a blue tit, wren or goldfinch into his pen by observing that bird in nature, by looking, which is a major component of his work. Despite his great knowledge of birds, he calls himself 'an amateur ornithologist, who continues to learn every day'.
(source: Kunstbus)