Marcus van Soest (1965) - Untitled

Marcus van Soest
Oil painting on panel
1995

Marcus van Soest moves his work between figuration and abstraction. His large, highly colorful works are absurdist, capricious, and humorous in nature and testify to a imaginative mind. Marcus predominantly creates figurative, colorful, humorous, bizarre, and estranging acrylic paintings in which madness is central: “l'Art de la Folie.” Works by his hand are very recognizable and certainly authentic to call: form and color use are highly recognizable and his pictorial language is optimal and multi-dimensional in nature.

Marcus was born in 1965 in The Hague, spent a year studying at the K.A.B.K. in The Hague (graphic design), ran away screaming, and educated himself further in “Free Painting” (autodidact). He regularly exhibited in the Pulchri Studio in The Hague and won there in 1998 the Van Ommeren-de Voogt prize. In 2002 Marcus was allowed to design the poster for the Crossing Border festival and he made a banner for the annual sculpture exhibition Sculptuur in The Hague. Marcus regularly works in his studio in France and exhibits there at Galerie “Le Rire Blue” in Figeac. His latest exhibition there “Figurations Libres,” with among others Robert Combas, Francois Boisrond, Buddy Di Rosa, Erro, Roberto Solivieres, et al., took place in the summer of 2003. Currently Marcus is working on founding a center for cultural exchange in Cajarc / France: “Maison des Hirondelles.”