THE ARTIST

John van der Sterren is a New Zealand artist of Dutch origin.  He was born in Sukabumi, a town south of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. He spent his early years on a tea estate in west Java where his father was the manager. After the Second World War, the family immigrated to New Zealand, where he was educated and where he developed a taste for the arts. He studied the ‘cello with Madame Greta Ostova and through her met the well-known New Zealand painter, Cedric Savage, who introduced him to oil painting. On completing his secondary education, John entered the advertising business, working for one of New Zealand’s leading agencies J.Ilott Ltd. In 1983, the company’s international partners offered him a position in Jakarta, which he filled until 1991. At this time, he began to concentrate more on his art and launched his painting career in 1993, with a major exhibition at the Duta Fine Arts Foundation in Jakarta. Since then, he has become one of the leading landscape and portrait painters in Indonesia. He travels widely to gather raw material, generally in the form of charcoal and pen-and-ink sketches, which he later uses as the basis for his robust and highly colourful paintings. He is a “Fauvist” who paints in the European tradition. His work is keenly sought after by collectors both in Indonesia and overseas and is represented  in many private and museum collections around the world.

Note:Paintings shown on this website are examples from collections around the world.

                        For additional examples or further information, please contact:

                                           “<info@johnvandersterren.com>”