Jan Yoors

Who was Jan Yoors?

Jan Yoors was a Flemish-American artist, photographer, painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and tapestry creator.Growing up in Antwerp to liberal, pacifist parents, his father Eugeen Yoors, a famed stained-glass artist, Yoors studied painting before deciding to live with a gypsy Kumpania he encountered on the outskirts of Antwerp at the age of twelve, and about which he would later pen two memoirs, “The Gypsies” and “Crossing”, the latter about living with the Rom during World War II. Yoors fled to London after the war where he lived with his wife Annebert and her best friend Marianne. It is at this point that Yoors began to design tapestries and set up a tapestry studio with his Annebert wife and her best friend Marianne. In 1950 traveled to New York under the guise of a journalist deciding to stay. The following year, Annebert and Marianne joined and the three set up the Jan Yoors Studio. In New York, Jan mixed with numerous figures in the art and design worlds. Companies, such Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan, and private collectors, commissioned tapestries for their collections, and numerous exhibitions were held both in the United States and internationally.