Jos Lussenburg left behind a versatile and extensive body of work.
A changing overview of this can be seen in the gallery on this website
His work as a painter essentially involved capturing what personally moved him:
– in experience and encounters
– in impression (color, light, drama, movement, lines) through his characteristic powerful and at the same time loose brushstrokes
Many of his chosen subjects, driven by his engagement, can now be considered cultural heritage. Topics related to transience and their impact on human life in general; more specifically, the closure, drainage, and life on and around the Zuiderzee.
But also subjects related to musicality, street and circus musicians, celebration; religion and church (he was a believer himself, broadly interested but not religious);
humans in extreme circumstances (beggars, wanderers, monkey drivers, spirit drinkers, hunger winter, World War I refugees, trailer park, light morals).
Classification by theme:
- the ‘sea’ in all its manifestations
- navigating and fishing the ‘sea’
- the shores and harbor towns, especially around the Zuiderzee
- people:
- on and around the dying Zuiderzee
- on the Veluwe in 1920-75 (and elsewhere earlier)
- portraits, busts, nudes
- landscape, in all seasons, at home and abroad
- the rural life,
- farmhouses, edge houses, interiors
- rural life, animals around the farm
- abroad
- impressions of landscapes, villages, cities, buildings
- in Italy, Switzerland, France, Norway, Germany
- metaphore’s
‘The Flying Dutchman’ ,
‘Danse Macabre’ (Farewell to my Violin) and ‘Tod und das Mädchen’ ,
‘Beethoven’ ,
‘Christmas Night’, ‘Crucifix’, ‘Apostle’, ‘Passage through the Red Sea’
and others.
Ars longa, vita brevis
was written in chalk on the wall in his studio
‘Art is long, Life is short’
Publications include
Dying Sea, Jos Lussenburg and K. Boonenburg, Amsterdam 1963
The Dying Zuiderzee, Jos Lussenburg, Thom Stroïnk, K. Boonenburg, Apeldoorn 1975
Jos Lussenburg, On Waves of Imagination, Wim van der Beek, Thieme Art Deventer, 2010
Markant Palet, North Veluws Museum, Margot Jongendijk, exhibition brochure 2017
From Shipwrecked to Savior, Coen Bot, illustrated by Jos Lussenburg, De Librije, Haarlem 1948″