Portraits

“Only he who knows himself is capable of knowing others.” According to this motto, Jac For portrayed himself again and again as a “practise model” in the course of his life.

In his portraits Jac For always wanted to capture the spiritual or true character of the person he was painting as well. He had the ability to literally “extract” the “intrinsic essentiality” of the person he was portraying. He studied the physiognomy of the human face meticulously in order to reproduce the emerging personality traits. For this reason, he paid particular attention to how he painted the eyes as the “window to the soul”.

Under Jac For’s hand fourteen portraits emerged (from 1983 to 1986) of famous German inventors for the Inventors Gallery of the German Patent Office. Among them are names like Felix Wankel the inventor of the planetary piston engine, Hermann Oberth the “father of space travel”, and Conrad Zuse the inventor of the computer. Jac For was able to become personally acquainted with all these personalities while they sat for him.