Henk Pander, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most prominent artists, died Friday at the age of 85.
A 2018 file photo of Henk Pander in his home. Pander died Friday at the age of 85.
April Baer / OPB
Pander was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer earlier this year, according to Oregon ArtsWatch.
Pander was a child in the Netherlands when World War II began, grew up to attend art school in Amsterdam, and met a woman from Oregon who prompted his move to Portland at age 27 in 1965.
Over a career that spanned many decades, Pander experimented with many media, including ink and watercolor, but oil paintings make up the majority of his work. He gained recognition for his monumental, vivid, often captivating and sometimes terrifying, depictions of historical events.
Related: From OPB's archives: "State of Wonder" arts podcast, with a Henk Pander interview.
Pander’s paintings often pushed the region’s contemporary art scene with their themes of war, sex and catastrophe. For every sweet moment he depicted, he painted multiple reminders of the inhumanity of the world.
“As human beings, we live in nature and nature is indifferent and we survive by the skin of our teeth,” Pander told OPB in an interview in 2018. “There’s just an enormous amount of drama happening in people’s lives. And I decided to, over time, become kind of a history painter.”
A Henk Pander painting of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. It was included in a Portland Art Museum exhibit on the volcano.
Portland Art Museum
His focus on memory and the drama of contemporary existence shaped the nature of his work, he said. “Once you get on that road, it’s hard to get off it and say, ‘Now I’m going to make a pretty picture’.”
Pander was also a noteworthy portraitist. His commissioned portraits include another famous Oregon painter, C.S. Price, as well as Oregon governors Tom McCall and John Kitzhaber.
A portrait of Tom McCall in the Oregon State Capitol, painted by Henk Pander.
Courtesy of Oregon State Archives
Among Pander’s survivors are his sons, Jacob and Arnold, artists in their own rights who create as the Pander Brothers, known for their graphic novels, award-winning films and provocative paintings. (Jacob Pander produces stories for OPB’s Oregon Art Beat.)
Related: Watch: Oregon Art Beat on The Pander Brothers.