Sam Drukker

Curriculum Vitae

Sam Drukker (1957) studied at the Minerva Art Academy in Groningen The Netherlands where he received a classical training as painter and tutor. When he finished his studies he worked in Paris and Barcelona.  He founded the Netherlands group of Portrait painters of which he was a member until 2000. He is also a Professor at the Wackers Academy of Art in Amsterdam. Sam Drukker chooses to be involved in teaching because of his concern at the lack of traditional methods of painting within education. In 2011, Sam Drukker was named Artist of the Year.

Ophelia, oil on canvas, 110 x 190 cm

In Sam Drukker's figurative work the human form takes a central role which he paints and draws in its raw appearance and unaffected by culture. It is this depiction of life that he concentrates on almost exclusively, leaving the remaining surface of the painting virtually untouched. Beauty and decay lies side by side in his works, a fascinating entity, often at once dramatic and romantic. Sam Drukker wants to express life with every stroke of the brush: its beginning, its ending, ecstatic life or exhausted life.

Boxers, oil on canvas, 140 x 90 cm

Not only the human figure is of importance in his work but also form,

attitude and the combinations of colours. He does not paint within a well established idea that is constructed carefully, i.e. a step by step process. Sam creates spontaneously what he thinks he can see in his subject. As a support of his paintings, Sam Drukker uses “living materials” like old wooden panels of crates, sailing cloth, sometimes repaired and with all the imperfections and damages still visible.

Sam Drukker regularly works with writers. Together with Arnon Grunberg he made the lithographic portfolio "For Posterity" . A poem book with Anna Enquist, East Bergholt with Marcel Möring and a book with Mirjam Rotenstreich.

Essays about his paintings were written by Marcel Möring, W J Otten and C O Jellema.

East Bergholt, Constable Country, ink on paper, 30 x 50 cm

Among others the Groningen Museum, Drents Museum, the House of Parliament, Gasunion, Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam, Museum Flehite Amersfoort, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, ING-Bank, Rabobank, Museum MEAM Barcelona, Museum BAC Switserland, Eden Hotel Group have works by Sam Drukker in their collection.

Recently Sam Drukker made portraits of ten Jewish men who were adult during the Second World War. In these ten portraits Sam Drukker impressively captures a vanishing generation. This project called Minje\Minyan. is a fulfilment of Sam Drukker’s long-standing ambition to make his relationship with Judaism and his personal family history a subject of his work, giving it a face and voice. Minyan is intended as as tribute to survival, completeness and the tradition of the Jewish faith.

These ten paintings and twelve studies on paper where, among other locations, shown in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. The Minje\Minyan paintings and drawings are now in the permanent collection of the Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam.