Jan Van Oost Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Jan Van Oost (1961 - ) is a Flemish artist born in 1961 in Deinze. At the age of twenty he began to participate in group exhibitions in Belgium. Read the full biography

Jan Van Oost (1961 - ) is a Flemish artist born in 1961 in Deinze. At the age of twenty he began to participate in group exhibitions in Belgium. The specificity of his work lies in the use of objects that carry within them historical signs and full of meaning: silver trays, swords and daggers and mother of pearl, associated with precious materials such as marble slabs, crystal glasses, and shirts and silk veils. Although Jan Van Oost's compositions appear cruder, such as simple mirrors and funeral urns, they are elaborated as presentations of a “mannerist” tendency. They are invariably dominated by an obsessive interest in two great existential and classical themes that link him in particular to Belgian symbolism: death and eroticism. His drawings are filled with emaciated bodies, scattered skulls, skeletons and stiff mannequins. Each work is charged with a physical and moral seriousness, imbued with Baudelairean spleen. Jan Van Oost's work has been regularly exhibited around the world since 1984, with one of his last exhibitions taking place in Turin in 2011.