John van der Sterren is a Dutch/New Zealander, born in Sukabumi, West Java in 1938. His earliest years were spent on a tea estate, 60km from Sukabumi, where his father was the ‘Administrateur’, prior to World War II. After World War II, during which his family were interned in concentration camps, his parents decided to immigrate to New Zealand, and eventually became New Zealand citizens.

The family lived in Wellington and John was educated at Rongotai College. At an early age he developed an interest in the arts, first in cartooning, then in sculpture, and after that in music. Finally, having been encouraged by the well-known New Zealand painter, Cedric Savage, he took up oil painting.

Not wanting to make art his profession, John originally joined the advertising industry as a junior account executive and, from 1957, worked for 25 years with one of New Zealand’s leading advertising agencies of the day, J.Ilott Ltd. In 1983, he was offered a position by his company’s international associates, as technical advisor, managing their Indonesian associate company. He was employed in this capacity until 1991 at which time he left the industry and struck out on his own. It was at this time that he met Didier Hamel, Director of The Duta Fine Arts Foundation in Jakarta, who recognized his artistic abilities and challenged him to devote the rest of his life to art. With Didier Hamel’s support he began to build a reputation as a major player in the Indonesian art scene and was soon recognized as one of the leading landscape and portrait painters in Indonesia.