Hans Withoos
Contemporary and Surrealist Art Photographer
Hans Withoos (b. 1962, Son en Breugel, Netherlands) is a Dutch visual artist and photographic painter whose work blends layered, staged photography with imaginative, surrealist composition. Trained in textile design and photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Tilburg, he has developed an international career spanning more than 35 years, balancing commissioned photography with his independent artistic practice. Withoos' flagship series, such as Withoos meets Withoos, intertwines historical references to his 17th-century ancestor, the painter Matthias Withoos, with contemporary surreal imagery, creating vibrant and symbolic worlds that navigate between beauty, drama, and narrative. He lives and works in Rotterdam, exhibits extensively in museums and art fairs, and his work is collected internationally.
Visit Artist Website →Biography
Over more than three decades, Withoos has developed a multifaceted career that encompasses both commercial and fashion commissions for clients around the world and fiercely autonomous artistic work. He is best known for his photographic paintings, meticulously orchestrated and digitally layered images that evoke dreamlike worlds of abundance, artifice, and symbolic resonance. His work reflects a deep fascination with the multifaceted nature of beauty, from drama, light, and the human form to themes of suffering and transcendence, inviting the viewer to immerse themselves in narratives that are both familiar and otherworldly.
A fundamental pillar of Withoos' artistic 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, urban landscapes, and symbolic motifs from historical painting 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 through 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
Artist Statement
Hans Withoos' work lies 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 a world unto itself, 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 series Withoos meets Withoos, he draws inspiration from his 17th-century ancestor, the painter Matthias Withoos, reinterpreting historical still lifes and urban landscapes through a modern lens. The overlapping motifs of nature, human presence, and symbolic objects create images that are both familiar and otherworldly.
Withoos' work combines technical precision with poetic imagination. Each photograph is carefully composed yet open to interpretation, inviting the viewer to delve into visual narratives that are both 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 that shape our perception of the world.
