Jan Yoors
Encyclopedia
Jan Yoors was a Flemish
-American
artist
, photographer, painter
, sculptor
, writer, tapestry
creator.
Yoors was born in Antwerp, Belgium. At the age of 12, he ran away with a group of Romanies, or Gypsies, travelling with them for several months. When he finally returned home, rather than scold him, his liberal-minded parents gave him permission to spend part of each year with the Romanies, which he did until age 18. Later in life, he wrote a book called The Gypsies about his experiences with them. The book, considered a seminal work, is a rare insider's account of Gypsy life.
The Gypsies includes a number of gypsy words and Yoors suggests that variations of the original Sanskrit have occurred, over the years, between the various tribes. The one area where the differences are minimal is in the adages, a favourite reflection of the gypsy view of life and the world around them. The adages Yoors has quoted are word-for-word the same as those used by English gyspies and those of Zincali/Gitano gypsies from Spain.
Jan Yoors wrote another book entitled Crossing and took all of the photographs for the book Only One New York.
Jan Yoors was also a popular artist during the nineteen sixties. His art ranged from paintings to the large tapestries that made him famous.
A profile of Yoors entitled "A Gypsy for Our Time" appears on pp. 15–30 of Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (1997), by Adam Hochschild.
Flemish Region
The Flemish Region is one of the three official regions of the Kingdom of Belgium—alongside the Walloon Region and the Brussels-Capital Region. Colloquially, it is usually simply referred to as Flanders, of which it is the institutional iteration within the context of the Belgian political system...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, photographer, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, writer, tapestry
Tapestry
Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...
creator.
Yoors was born in Antwerp, Belgium. At the age of 12, he ran away with a group of Romanies, or Gypsies, travelling with them for several months. When he finally returned home, rather than scold him, his liberal-minded parents gave him permission to spend part of each year with the Romanies, which he did until age 18. Later in life, he wrote a book called The Gypsies about his experiences with them. The book, considered a seminal work, is a rare insider's account of Gypsy life.
The Gypsies includes a number of gypsy words and Yoors suggests that variations of the original Sanskrit have occurred, over the years, between the various tribes. The one area where the differences are minimal is in the adages, a favourite reflection of the gypsy view of life and the world around them. The adages Yoors has quoted are word-for-word the same as those used by English gyspies and those of Zincali/Gitano gypsies from Spain.
Jan Yoors wrote another book entitled Crossing and took all of the photographs for the book Only One New York.
Jan Yoors was also a popular artist during the nineteen sixties. His art ranged from paintings to the large tapestries that made him famous.
A profile of Yoors entitled "A Gypsy for Our Time" appears on pp. 15–30 of Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (1997), by Adam Hochschild.