Johannes Franciscus Anemaet

Date of Birth1911

Born inSint Maarten

Painter

Bio

Johannes Franciscus Anemaet (1911, St. Martin - † 2004)

J.F. Anemaet was born in Philipsburg (St. Martin). His father, who served with the police, was from the Netherlands; his mother was from the Windward Islands. He spent his earliest childhood on St. Martin. In 1948 he married Miss P.A.C. Stoop in Indoniesia. A son and two daughters were born of this marriage.

As an artist and a painter Anemaet was completely self-taught. Already at a very early age he trained himself in drawing as a means of expression. During all the years that he attended school he kept training himself independently especially with pencil, drawing chalk and crayon, which were cheap materials for a school going boy. Once he had arrived in Indonesia, he was inspired and stimulated by the numerous Dutch and foreign painters of landscapes and street scenes there and he learned much from them.
Frequent visits to museums and exhibitions added to his further development. The sketches, drawings and paintings made by him in those days, with a few exceptions, were all lost during the war.

During the captivity, by dint of much improvisation, he still succeeded in making sketches and drawings of fellow camp inmates and of scenes from daily life in the camp. After his liberation and transfer to Celebes he made a number of studies of landscapes and scenes from militairy life. His transfer tot Curaçao meant a more peaceful period, on account of which the painting and drawing activities could develop better.

After his retirement and return to the Netherlands, Anemaet continued painting Curaçao on the basis of previously made sketches. Added to that he also started making pen and ink drawings and watercolors, all of these, with hardly an expection, related to Curaçao. In the last few years he aszo made many portraits, executed in various techniques.

Since 1958 his paintings have been exhibited at several echibitions on Curaçao, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Johannes Franciscus Anemaet

Bio