Hans Withoos

Over more than three decades, Withoos has developed a multifaceted career that includes both commissioned commercial and fashion work for clients worldwide and a fiercely autonomous artistic oeuvre. He is best known for his photographic paintings, meticulously staged, digitally layered images that evoke dreamlike worlds of abundance, artifice, and symbolic resonance. His work reflects a deep fascination with the many facets of beauty, from drama, light, and the human form to themes of suffering and transcendence, and invites viewers into narratives that are at once familiar and otherworldly.

A signature focus of Withoos’s practice is the ongoing Withoos meets Withoos series, in which he engages in a creative dialogue with the 17th‑century Dutch painter Mathias Withoos, his distant ancestor. By integrating still lifes, townscapes, and symbolic motifs from historical paintings into contemporary photographic compositions, often populated with models, flowers, birds, and surreal elements, Withoos seamlessly weaves together past and present, tradition and innovation.

Throughout his career, Withoos has explored inclusivity and diversity across his projects, reflected in series such as New Romantics, My Name is Blessing, and Proud People, alongside collaborations with designers, dancers, and filmmakers. His work extends beyond the still image; he co‑created the award‑winning short film The World of Withoos, which synthesizes his artistic themes in motion.

Withoos’s autonomous work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries, including major solo exhibitions like The Joy of Life (Galerie Persoon & Oogenlust, 2025), and featured at prestigious venues such as the Westfries Museum (Hoorn), Museum Flehite (Amersfoort), and Stadhuismuseum Zierikzee, as well as international art fairs including KunstRAI, PAN Amsterdam, Scope Miami, and VOLTA Basel. His imagery is held in public and private collections across Europe and beyond.

Withoos lives and works in Rotterdam, where he continues to push the boundaries of contemporary photography and visual narrative, uniting technical mastery with poetic imagination.

Hans Withoos’ work exists at the intersection of imagination, memory, and visual storytelling. His photographic paintings are meticulously staged and digitally layered images that blend reality and fiction, past and present. Each composition functions as its own world, where narrative, symbolism, and beauty coexist to provoke curiosity, reflection, and emotional resonance.

A defining element of his practice is the dialogue between history and contemporary life. In the Withoos meets Withoos series, he draws inspiration from his 17th‑century ancestor, painter Matthias Withoos, reinterpreting historical still lifes and cityscapes through a modern lens. Layered motifs of nature, human presence, and symbolic objects create imagery that is at once familiar and otherworldly.

Withoos’ work combines technical precision with poetic imagination. Every photograph is carefully composed yet open to interpretation, inviting viewers into visual narratives that are simultaneously personal and universal. His exploration of beauty, light and shadow, fragility and abundance, presence and absence, produces images that linger long after the first glance.

Ultimately, his art fosters connection: between past and present, reality and imagination, and artist and viewer, encouraging reflection, wonder, and a deeper appreciation of the stories shaping our perception of the world.