Jan Mensinga, 8 etchings for Les Fleurs du Mal, Baarn, Arethusa Pers.
Jan Mensinga (1924 – 1998) Jan Mensinga was born in Leeuwarden as the only child from his father Eppe Mensinga's second marriage. His mother, Jantje Mensinga-Freese, died when Jan was 10 years old. Although musical as a child, Jan Mensinga developed into a virtuoso draftsman and graphic artist after going into hiding, imprisonment, forced labor, and internment during the Second World War. Until the early 1970s, his development proceeded smoothly and in a straight line: commissions, travel grants, and special bibliophile editions. By then, he was a lecturer at the Rijksacademie, but the Modern Era brought about major, stormy changes there as well. Radical educational reforms took place, accompanied by considerable intrigue. He could not cope with this. He already enjoyed a good drink, but now he became an alcoholic. After about ten years, he pulled himself together following a marriage to his last wife, the Israeli Billha Zussman. She concluded that Mensinga belongs among the finest and most interesting Dutch graphic artists of the twentieth century. He died on April 2, 1998, at the age of 73 in Amsterdam. (internet)
