Pat Andrea was born in 1942 in The Hague. As the son of illustrator Metti Naezer and painter Kees Andrea, he was brought up in an environment conducive to artistic creation. In such a nurturing context, a precocious talent manifested itself. In 1948, at the age of six, his drawings were rewarded with his first artistic prize. However, in spite of his natural abilities, Andrea’s initial academic ambition was to study medicine. It would take an inspirational tour through the Koninklijk Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Fine Arts) in The Hague to change his plans and convince him to pursue artistic training. In 1960, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts under the tutelage of masters such as Westerink, Walter Nobbe and Peter Blokhuis.
Two years after graduating in 1967, he received the Jacob Maris drawing prize. A year later, he seized the opportunity to exhibit his work at the Gemeentemuseum (now known as the Kunstmuseum) in his home city. During this event, Andrea crossed paths with the Belgian art critic Pierre Sterckx who, following their encounter, would promote the Dutch artist’s work in the neighbouring country.
The 1970s were characterised by collaborations, chiefly the foundation of the ABN Group alongside Walter Nobbe and Peter Blokhuis. In 1976, thanks to an open invitation by French art critic Jean Clair, Andrea was able to show some of his work in Paris for the first time at the Jean Briance Gallery. Numerous shows in the French capital would follow, eventually leading Andrea to settle in the city in 1979. The following decade was dominated by illustrative work for cultural, literary or artistic magazines. Clair once again invited Andrea to take part in an important exhibition he was curating, featuring the likes of Jim Dine, David Hockney, Kitaj, Raymond Mason and Olivier O. Olivier. This event would mark the birth of a staple movement of the second half of the 20th century: la Nouvelle Subjectivité. The visibility offered by his affiliation to the exhibition enabled Andrea to travel the world to show his art and take part in the main cultural events that mark the artistic calendar.
Basking in this international recognition, the draughtsman turned to teaching. His friend Pierre Sterckx facilitated his move in Belgium, inviting him to run a drawing workshop at l’Ecole de Recherche Graphique (School of Graphic Research) in Brussels. A similar initiative took place in 1984 at l’Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Artistically, Andrea’s oeuvre is traversed by recurring themes and figures. A sober eroticism is omnipresent, as if unconsciously spilled all over the canvas. Sex, violence, death, magic and surrealism find themselves thematically intertwined in closed off, highly architectonic spaces which feature unstable and panicked figures, and, more often than not, a canine presence.
