Schaesberg, 1920 – Amsterdam, 2012

After studying at the Industrial Art College in Maastricht, he completed his training at the National Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. In 1948 and 1949, he was awarded the Royal Grant for Painting.

Considered among the most important Dutch artists of his generation, Ger Lataster took the language of abstract expressionism to the extreme. Influenced by informal art and the creative context of the 1950s, his work explores the idea of spirituality and the sublime by developing the formal properties of painting.

Between the 1950s and 1960s, he established himself on the international scene, through his relationship with William Sandberg, director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, who included him in several exhibitions he organised, and thanks to Galerie Paul Facchetti in Paris, which has always been keen to support informal research. In 1963, Lataster, together with Mari Andriessen, Nic Jonk, Theo Mulder and Wessel Couzijn, was at the heart of the Alternative Art Academy ’63 in Haarlem. In 1966, Lataster stayed in the United States as a professor at the Minneapolis School of Art and in the same year he had the opportunity to exhibit at the Graham Art Gallery in New York. He had numerous exhibitions in renown museums such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, the Dordrechts Museum and the Singer Museum in Naarden. His paintings became part of private and museum collections.

Lataster’s production in the following decades was increasingly free and experimental, his abstract expressionism becoming a constantly innovative and enriching method capable of exploiting the most diverse and contrasting techniques and materials.

In 2010, he was knighted in the Order of the Dutch Lion; in the same year he received the Honorary Sign of Merit from the City of Amsterdam. He passed away in 2012.