The erotic art of Peter van Straaten

Dutch cartoonist and illustrator Peter van Straaten was one of Holland’s best-known and most beloved cartoonists for more than half a century. He is best known for his astute commentary on how ordinary people deal with their lives. People who know him will not quickly associate him with erotic art. Yet Van Straaten makes frequent use of nudity in his work.

Van Straaten was born in Arnhem, studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and began his career in 1958 at Het Parool, where he illustrated news items and made political cartoons. From 1968 to 1987 he published daily Father and Son, a comic strip that became a great success and inspired a television series.

The “Am I Doing It Right” series was his first foray into illustrating relationships and sexuality, and between 1984 and 2000 he drew a weekly comic strip about a single woman named Agnes. His work was also released as an annual calendar; Peter’s Zeurkalender.

The first of three sexually explicit comic books, Offense, was published in 1984, followed by Nastoot in 1987 and Lust in 2006. Peter passed away in 2016.

Peter van Straaten’s work can be found on hie official website (in Dutch).