'Bubblegum Geisha' (2024).
Edwin Hagendoorn is a Dutch graphic designer and painter, known for his large cityscapes in oil and acrylic, inspired by the After Nature movement. Since 2021, he is also active as a comic creator, creating the dark and provocative graphic novels 'Uiltje Engnek' (Concerto Books, 2021) and 'Bubblegum Geisha' (Concerto Books, 2024).
Van Wulften's C.I.C.
Born in Rotterdam in 1968, Edwin Hagendoorn began his art career at age seventeen, doing advertising art. At a 1987 comic festival in Breda, he met Hein de Kort and Eric Schreurs, artists of provocative comics like 'Pardon Lul' and 'Joop Klepzeiker'. Within a month, Hagendoorn had a job at the art studio of their Amsterdam-based publisher, Ger van Wulften's C.I.C. There, Hagendoorn helped with the production of the 'Joop Klepzeiker' pocket calendars and designs for T-shirts, condoms and other merchandise. At C.I.C., he also worked in a steady collaboration with Hein de Kort on Pardon Lul Magazine (1988-1991).
The Amsterdam comic store Lambiek at Koningsstraat 27, painted by Edwin Hagendoorn for its 50th anniversary in 2018. Among the characters outside the store we recognize Nino Pagot and Antonio Pagot's Calimero, René Windig and De Jong's Heinz being kicked out of the store, Dave Cooper's Eddy Table, Robert Crumb's 'Keep on Truckin' character, Joost Swarte's Jopo de Pojo and in the foreground Tex Avery's Droopy, a skull-headed character from Eric Schreurs' free work and Joop Klepzeiker's dog from the Schreurs series 'Joop Klepzeiker'.
Painter
In the evenings, Hagendoorn enjoyed himself making large paintings with oils and acrylic. Discovering his true passion was fine arts, he turned to painting fulltime in 1993. Through workshops from the Amsterdam Institute of Painting (AIS), he became acquainted with the rebellious painters of the After Nature collective, including Jurriaan van Hall and Peter Klashorst. The group tried to break with the prevailing climate of conceptual and theoretical art studies by painting from observation, focusing on landscapes, still lifes, nudes and portraits. Hagendoorn followed their tradition, painting both in his studio and on location. He is especially known for his cityscapes. Living alternatively in the Netherlands and Olhão, Portugal, Hagendoorn's work has been featured in national and international exhibitions. Hagendoorn is married to fellow painter Justine Albronda, with whom he had also made joint works. In 2003, the couple released the book 'Justine Albronda - Edwin Hagendoorn: een Dialoog in Schilderijen' ("Justine Albronda - Edwin Hagendoorn: a Dialogue in Paintings").
'Uiltje Engnek' (2021).
Graphic novelist
In 2019, after 25 years of professional painting, Edwin Hagendoorn rediscovered a desire to make comics. He began working on 'Uiltje Engnek' (Concerto Books, 2021), a black comedy graphic novel about an owl that witnesses unsettling and perverted scenes in an early 19th-century Spanish nunnery. The story is told without words, in 120 pictures, inspired by the dark engravings of the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya.
'Bubblegum Geisha' (2024).
Three years later, Hagendoorn's second graphic novel, 'Bubblegum Geisha' (Concerto Books, 2024), was released in both Dutch and English. The story is a dizzying journey through the psyche of a man whose mild concern for a Japanese girl called Keiko turns into an obsessive state, and his quest to find her takes him to the darkest corners of his own fears. Associative, uncensored, erotic, perverse and rough, the book is a graphical tour de force, presented as an ode to underground comix, and with pop cultural nods to Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland', Nabokov's 'Lolita', 'Poor Things' and the Japanese artists Hokusai and Nobuyoshi Araki.
Graphic contributions
For the December 2023 issue of the Swiss-German comic magazine Strapazin, an issue portraying several European comic stores, Edwin Hagendoorn was one of the six chosen artists to represent the Amsterdam store Lambiek with a two-page comic story.
Edwin Hagendoorn.