Ton Schulten

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Ton Schulten is a Dutch painter who mainly paints landscapes using bright blocks of colour.

He was born on 25 April 1938 in Ootmarsum in the Netherlands, one of six baker's children. He graduated from the Enschede Academy for Art and Industry in 1962 as a graphic designer and worked in advertising for many years, later setting up agencies such as S & O and Createam. In 1989 he left advertising to become a full-time painter and initially went through phases of painting abstract geometrical forms and gardens of colourful flowers. In 1991 he suffered a serious car accident on Tenerife, in which a friend was killed and he and his wife Ank Lammerink were put into a coma. After the accident his style changed and he began painting landscapes of the Twente area using initially primary colours and later also pastel shades. Ootmarsum houses Schulten's own gallery and a Ton Schulten museum, which opened in 1997. His work has great commercial success, but is critically considered to be lightweight. He knighted a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2002. In 2004 the German art critic Harmut Rau named his style of painting Concensism. In 2005 Schulten successfully sued an amateur-painter for making works in his style.