Since he arrived in Mexico in 1975, Jan Hendrix has been a key figure on the country’s artistic scene. Supported by a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Cultural Affairs to work on the Mexican landscape, the artist has produced a series of works inspired by the aesthetic of the traveller and naturalist, incorporating a complex interlacing of visual and cultural experiences.

Hendrix constructs an unexpected bridge between two different traditions of thought about the natural world, that of Holland and that of Mexico. As a conceptual artist, his experimentation with printmaking is key. Not only is he a practitioner of reference in researching new technical and visual possibilities for screen printing, but also a producer of the work of many other artists and the inventor and transmitter of a vast repertoire of techniques connected to the use of paper and ink.

In recent years, the work of Jan Hendrix has taken two major directions. On the one hand he creates artistic surfaces for contemporary buildings and spaces in collaboration with architects, and on the other has produced artists’ books with writers and poets of the stature of Seamus Heaney, Gabriel García Márquez and Hans van de Waarsenburg. The artist develops subtle communicating vessels between the visual and literary cultures of Holland and Mexico.

This overview of his work organized by the MUAC and the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht provides an occasion to present the public with the shared history of sensibility between the two countries.

This exhibition is Jan Hendrix’s first retrospective to include his technical and visual research into the contemporary possibilities of printmaking. The show also presents the artist’s vision of the importance of nature in our social and personal memory.