Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936, this artist studied at the Academy of Art in Munich, Germany, from 1956 to 1960. After a career in teaching, including a position as a guest professor at the Hamburg Art Academy, he became a professor at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1987 to 1992.
His works have been exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Kiel in 1997, and at the Städtische Galerie Villa Zanders in Bergisch Gladbach in 2002. In that same year, he had a solo exhibition at the Art Cologne, receiving great critical acclaim and achieving huge success within the German and international art community.
Voss’s work reflects an eternal quest for order, in the very act of creating order, in opposition to the perpetual, chaotic, and complex movement that surrounds our existence. He experiments with various techniques and materials in his works, which can convey immense tranquility or be powerfully vibrant with saturated colors.
What all his works have in common is the accumulation of intersecting colors, connected by lines, drawings, and fragments of drawings. From the 80s onwards, Jan Voss also applies this formal language to three-dimensional objects.
Living in Paris since 1960, when he joined the important KWY Group formed by Portuguese artists Lourdes Castro, René Bertholo, António Costa Pinheiro, João Vieira, José Escada, and Gonçalo Duarte, as well as Bulgarian artist Christo, Jan Voss is one of the most prominent and recognized German artists today. He has exhibited in major contemporary art museums and is represented in the MoMa – Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Sprengel Museeum in Hannover, and the Toyama Museum in Tokyo, Japan.
