Bright colors in a knit of jokes. In Jan van Haasteren’s drawings, smile and tranquility fit together like puzzle pieces. The draftsman from Bergen may be 87, but he doesn’t want to miss his work. Now there is an exhibition about his worldwide success. “In this profession you sometimes have to be rebellious.”
Exuberant art colors his living room in the heart of Bergen. His grandchildren look at you from picture frames. As if the artist signed everything himself. In front of him is a book of collected congratulations from fans. Responses came from all over the world to congratulate him on his birthday. Because puzzle king Jan van Haasteren has turned 87 years old.
He himself thought the opening of the exhibition about his work was perhaps an even bigger celebration. Or his team’s tenth anniversary. Together with his daughters, these colleagues are now his most important sounding boards, says the draftsman. Because after his wife died in 2005, he is alone. “She had a great sense of humor,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “Fortunately, I have my family and my work as pillars of support. Companionship and creativity keep me going.”
About his background
Jan van Haasteren was born in 1936 in Schiedam. During the war he can barely go to school. No teachers and no fuel to heat the classroom. “To keep myself busy, I spent hours drawing at home. In retrospect, that was formative.” Every birthday he receives pencils as a gift, with Sinterklaas always a sketchbook in his shoe. At school a five for math, but a ten for drawing.
After the hunger winter, he weighs so little that the Red Cross sends him to a host family in England for six months after the liberation to recuperate. “I was lucky enough to live with an RAF pilot who loved to draw. He encouraged me to get started with pencil and paper.”
About his education
He goes to vocational school to learn the profession of a house painter and then follows four years of training for visual arts in Rotterdam, specializing in advertising drawing. “I would rather become a painter, but my father was afraid that I could not earn a living in it.” In advertising, he succeeds: when his exam papers are exhibited in the auditorium at the graduation ceremony, he immediately receives offers from advertising agencies that want to hire him. For years he has been making illustrations for advertisements, posters and brochures.
About his career
“Actually, I’m not an advertiser. I can make a nice drawing for a campaign, but in my heart I find it much more fun to come up with stories and characters myself.” That is possible if he makes the switch to the studios of Marten Toonder, where they make films. He then works for film producer Joop Geesink, for whom he draws storylines for TV characters such as Rick de Kikker and Loeki de Leeuw.
He only finds complete freedom when he can start working as a cartoonist. “The people in the comic book world are also so nice. They are free thinkers, regardless of how things should be supposed to be.” For newspapers and magazines he makes drawings for comics such as Kappie, Tom Poes and Baron van Tast. Comic book heroes such as ‘Erik and Grandpa’ and ‘Titus Trotyl’ are also his work. “That work is very nice, but as a cartoonist you work for a pittance. That is why I have always continued to do advertising work on the side. One day they asked me if I could do something with smurfs. I immediately said yes. That has become a golden job.” It enables him to move to Bergen with his wife and daughters after a stopover in Hensbroek.
About his puzzle success
In 1977, jenever giant Bokma asks him to make a so-called viewing poster: a poster with a comic strip. That works. “A liquor store I know said that customers only came for the poster and not for the jenever.” He soon made his own Jan van Haasteren records. The characteristics: absurd humor, detailed drawings, recognizable characters and jokes in which the underdog comes out on top. Everything in bright, cheerful colors. “Each poster is a comic strip in itself.” Fixed ingredients are the shark fin (a legacy of Baron van Tast), Sinterklaas and the portrait of the draftsman himself.
It will be very big if Jumbo will release the drawings as puzzles. When Van Haasteren turns 65, he puts his advertising work aside and only draws for the puzzles. He has now made a hundred. “One puzzle drawing is about two months work for me.” But puzzlers can’t get enough of it. To meet the demand, he has had his own team for ten years now, in which he works as Studio Jan van Haasteren with his kindred spirits Dick Heins and Rob Derks, Mars Gokken and Wilma van den Bosch. He himself draws three plates a year.
About his approach
He starts with a pencil sketch, then traces the lines with a dip pen and ink. This is followed by coloring with a brush and ecoline. But the core is mainly the joke density of the drawings. “To get it down on paper, you have to be able to look at people with a wink. The art is to taste life itself and to translate that into drawings. For that you have to be a little rebellious, maybe a little anti-authoritarian. Because sometimes you can secretly show your middle finger.”
On the international question
The Jan van Haasteren puzzles are now sold in all corners of the world. Look at the reactions in his congratulatory book and you will see the international madness: from Texel, puzzler Hanneke sent a photo of her cat Toos between the puzzle pieces, Maarten from Africa reports that the puzzle work offers him distraction in his remote village, and a photo came from Poland of enthusiasts who have wallpapered their entire room with his puzzles. Do the artists take into account the clientele across the border? “A little. In America they are quite prudish. That is why we are careful with nudity in the drawings.”
About explanations for success
“Puzzles are relaxing. It puts your head on a safe track for a while. Every piece you lay is a small success. And each piece also tells a new detail of the whole story. For fans, it is a sport to recognize their favorite characters. They read the puzzle like a comic strip and want to know what happens next. By providing those extra layers, fans remain very loyal.”
About the exhibition
“I am a fan of the work of artist Marius van Dokkum. His cards are entire comic strips in one image. When I was at his museum in Harderwijk, we got talking. That is how the idea arose to hold an exhibition about my work there. The result has become special.” The exhibition is called ‘All the craziness in a piece’. Visitors follow the making process of a puzzle, see examples and can work behind a drawing table to create a design à la Van Haasteren. “In this way, they themselves become part of a puzzle.”
About the future
“I will continue. I don’t draw as fast as I used to, but I still enjoy working too much to miss it.”
Exhibition
The exhibition ‘All the craziness in a piece’ offers a look behind the scenes of Studio Jan van Haasteren. On display until 14 January in the Harderwijk City Museum.