Beautiful Man: Jan van Stralen and the Netherlands’ Only All-Male Gallery

Jan and his cat in his office © Sam Maguire

The MooiMan gallery owners have been promoting gay art for 14 years. Despite challenges and harsh criticism from locals and politicians, they strive to put male art on the map.

When I arrive at the MooiMan gallery, owner Jan van Stralen is looking out of the large bay window with a worried look on his face. “Something very bad has happened,” he says. A man was outside their house and gallery just minutes before my arrival. He was threatening to rip down their rainbow flag bunting and shouting homophobic insults. There was a similar incident during the night he says and hands me some of the torn pride flags, his bushy eyebrows set into a concerned frown. 

As we're talking, his husband Sandro rushes in through the front door, flustered and speaking into his phone. “He’s reporting it to the police,” Jan explains, before leading me into the spacious office of their MooiMan gallery, which means 'beautiful man' in Dutch. Hidden amongst a row of houses on a leafy street outside of Groningen’s city center, it's the only male-focused art gallery in the Netherlands. There are, in fact, only two others in the world, both of them in Germany.

The couple founded MooiMan in 2006, when Jan got a call from an artist that a gay art space in Amsterdam was closing down. “He said, Jan, did you hear? Forbours is closing down the 1st of November, and I have all my artworks for my exhibition there ready and waiting. What should I do?” At this point, the couple had been part of the LGBTQ+ art scene in the Netherlands for years. They were working as graphic designers, and had been helping to produce the Flikkeragenda (f*ggot agenda), a gay men’s tear-off calendar which had been running since the 1980s. 

The MooiMan Office © Sam Maguire

“Sandro and I were talking about it and said, there won’t be a male art gallery anymore in the Netherlands? That’s impossible. Shall we have a try?” So they converted the lower floor of their house into a gallery, complete with a screen printing room, two offices and ample space for launches and exhibitions. That year, the first MooiMan exhibition was opened by Groningen’s mayor. Since taking on Florbours’ clients, the couple have been buying and selling male-focused art for over a decade, attending art fairs and hosting openings. 

We're sitting in Jan’s office, paintings and photographs cover the walls. Piled up on the large tables are books and sculptures, ranging from small bronze figures to huge glass pieces. All of  them feature a depiction of a man, the majority of them naked. I have never seen so many naked men in one room. “People ask me how I can concentrate with all these guys around me” Jan jokes, “but I’m used to it.”

We sit down and the tension from his dramatic morning begins to dissipate. Jan has quick hazel eyes that dart out from behind round spectacles, an easy smile and a very bushy mustache. He wears a uniform of pink and grey sweats which make him look like a friendly gym teacher. He begins to tell me the long history of how the couple met at the first Groningen pride march and the development of the Flikkeragendas which they started making again in recent years, albeit with the more politically correct title ‘Homoagenda’. 

He brings me the latest edition called ‘Your Daily Male’. The cover depicts a muscular colossus standing nude in a lake, towering over the traditional Dutch boats floating on the surface. “You see the name in the corner? Johannes van Stralen, that's my father” Jan tells me. For a second, I think he’s joking. It turns out that he and his sister sent the German artist Martin Artz some of their father’s old oil paintings in the attic, and gave him license to paint his trademark giant men over them, “What would your father think if he saw the painting?”  I ask him. “That the guy is too naked,” he says chuckling. 

I ask him how he finds artists to show in their gallery and it becomes clear that the couple have fostered personal relationships with the majority of the 120 artists on their roster. They are from countries as diverse as Brazil, the US, France and Spain, “when we go on holiday, we try to make a tour and visit our artists,” he explains.

As he shows me around the gallery, the couple’s two cats run around in between the sculptures. Everywhere you look there are men - the new exhibition features photography by Gert Lemmers of men crouched in repose amongst brutalist looking cityscapes. 

While there is no explicit nudity in the poster for the exhibition, the pavement sign drew the ire of two locals. One of their neighbors walked up and ripped the poster out in April. “So there were two incidents just before the opening of the exhibition. I called the police. And the police told him (the perpetrator)if you don't like it, okay, that's allowed. But it's not allowed to destroy things or steal things.” Jan seems oddly calm about the ordeals. 

Sandro and Sam in the MooiMan Office © Sam Maguire

The charge that the work they exhibit is too provocative, or straight up pornographic is one which they must regularly contend with. “When you see Michelangelo’s David it’s not necessarily a sexual thing, this is also not a sexual thing.” He recalls an event held at the gallery during the first few years where some speakers were participating in a debate around the boundaries between art and pornography when the 7 year-old child from next door walked in, took one look at the paintings and said “Oh look, that’s a willy.” “It was so hilarious, here we were discussing all of this stuff and a child could see it so honestly for what it was.” 

I get the sense that provocation is not exactly Jan and Sandro’s enemy. “The minister blocked me on Instagram. And I see this as a compliment. I was surprised, like, hey, I can't tag her?” Sandro guffaws. He has just come into the room and is telling me about his work setting up the non-profit organization ‘LGBTQ+ Asylum Support.’ The minister he is referring to is Marjolein Faber, the conservative minister for immigration, whom the pair are both highly critical of. 

Sandro has helped hundreds of asylum seekers plead their cases, as many of them are incorrectly deemed to come from ‘safe’ countries or are offered no protections in asylum seekers facilities where they are often vulnerable to abuse. He attends court cases with them, pleads their cases to politicians and visits the refugee centers. 

I ask him if he sees any links between his work for asylum seekers and the work of the gallery? “In the beginning, we tried to keep them separate. And now we see that here is so much overlap.” For him, both sides bleed into each other and help raise the profile of the other. With all the criticism they face, the tireless hours helping asylum seekers and the threats of abuse from people in their community, I wonder what motivates them to keep it all up. “Idealism” Jan says with a sarcastic grin, “there had to be some idiots who would do this.”