Mart Kempers was born in the Netherlands in 1924. A master graphic artist and draughtsman of considerable skill, he worked across painting, printmaking, and botanical illustration with equal precision and dedication. His fine art editions — including precise colour lithographs and meticulously observed multi-stage botanical studies — demonstrate a technical command that places him among the most accomplished Dutch graphic artists of his generation.
His prints produced with Fred Genis at the workshop at Oudkerk in Friesland — Ferry, Roses Before and After (1977), Boat and Farm, and Farm House — reflect both his technical mastery and his deep feeling for the Dutch landscape. Roses Before and After is particularly characteristic — a botanical study rendered across multiple stages with the patience and precision of a scientific illustrator, yet carrying the warmth and observation of a committed artist. Ferry, Boat and Farm, and Farm House speak directly to the Frisian world surrounding the studio — flat waterways, working vessels, and the quiet rhythms of rural life rendered with the clarity and economy that defined his draftsmanship throughout his career.
Kempers’s work sits comfortably within the long Dutch tradition of precise, craft-conscious graphic art — rooted in close observation of the natural and everyday world, executed with the highest standards of technical skill.
Mart Kempers died in 1993
