Profile
Frans Roobeek received his education at the Rietveld Academy (1975-1976) and at MK Ateliers (2014-2018) in Amsterdam.
From its founding until 1985, he was a member of the Artists' Association Hoorn & Omstreken. During that time, he was primarily active in drawing and painting.
To support himself, he moved to the Nijmegen area in 1984, where he began working in the semiconductor industry. Alongside this work, he remained active in art. With the arrival of the iPad, he switched to making drawings with it. And in 2014, he finally found his way to printmaking. In it, he found the technique that best enabled him to express what he observed in his surroundings, wherever in the world he was. Always searching for patterns and structures in nature and language. This is also visible in his work.
In 2026, he moved to Heiloo, close to the coast that is so dear to him.
His travels have taken him to many places around the world, especially Spain and France, but also further afield: the USA and in Asia, including Japan and Taiwan.
He created a great deal of work inspired by the landscapes of Spain, particularly on the north coast. Sixty of these works, mainly lithographs and etchings, were on display at the exhibition “Spanish Landscapes” at Kunsthuis Wijchen.
The Chinese and Japanese languages led to an exploration of his own visual language under the working title “More than a character.” For this, he created a series of sugar etchings. These were on display at the exhibition “Hidden Meanings” at Hernen Castle.
In the years that followed, he created increasingly more landscapes, using woodcuts, employing rhythmic chisels, and painting with color.
From the very beginning, in 2017, Frans has been a member of the Panoramists: a group of artists who came together, at the initiative of Astrid Fleuren, to create etchings over two meters wide—panoramics of various locations in Amsterdam. These were exhibited in 2025 at Galerie Overstroom in Amsterdam.
Frans has an inquisitive mind. He experiments with the reuse and combinations of materials. In 2026, he began a series of works in which he steps outside the rectangle, using prints of cut-out shapes in plywood. He uses parts of these shapes in a series of small, colorful etchings. This experiment is still ongoing.
Photographs of some of his works have been greatly enlarged to the size of approximately four by two meters, and these have been on display at the NXP company premises. This applies, among others, to the etching "Noordwijkerhout" and the woodcut "Bospad". Various works lend themselves well to serving as garden posters.