Jan Yoors (12 April 192227 November 1977) was a Belgian-American artist, photographer, painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and tapestry creator. Growing up in Antwerp to liberal, pacifist parents, his father Eugeen Yoors, a famed stained-glass artist, Yoors studied painting before deciding to live with a Rom kumpania he encountered on the outskirts of Antwerp at the age of twelve, and about which he would later write two memoirs, The Gypsies (1967) and Crossing: A Journal of Survival and Resistance in World War II (1971), the latter about living with the Rom during World War II. Yoors fled to London after the war where he lived with his wife Annebert and her best friend Marianne. It is at this point that Yoors began to design tapestries and set up a tapestry studio with his wife Annebert and Marianne. In 1950 he moved to New York, traveling there under the guise of a journalist. The following year, Annebert and Marianne joined and the three set up the Jan Yoors Studio. In New York, Yoors befriended numerous figures in the art and design worlds. He received commissions from corporations such as Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan, and private collectors. His work was seen in numerous exhibitions across the United States and internationally. In New York in the 50s, Yoors also continued his passion for photography, which he began while living with the Rom, documenting the streets of New York. He traveled extensively on a trip to revisit his Rom family in Europe, and, in 1966–67 photographed post-war religious buildings for Edward Sovik as part of the First International Congress on Religion, Architecture, and the Visual Arts in New York. Yoors's oeuvre is currently represented by several galleries in New York, Europe including reGeneration Furniture, Todd Merrill, L Parker Stephenson Photographs, and Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp, and regularly shown at design and photography fairs. Early life and childhood 1922: Yoors is born in Antwerp to Eugeen Yoors, a famed stained glass-artist who studied painting under Gustave Moreau, and Magda Peeters, a human rights activist, both of them Catholic pacifists. 1934: At the age of twelve Yoors first encounters a kumpania of the Romani people on the outskirts of Antwerp. Upon becoming friends with Putzina and his father Pulika, the Romanies adopt Yoors. 1934–1939: Yoors splits his time between the Romanies and his parents' home, often traveling long distances to find his Rom