The second blog on a female artist is on Charlotte Mutsaers, winner of the P.C. Hooft price as an author, but what most people tend to forget is that Mrs. Mutsaers started her career in art, (after studying Dutch language), as a painter and at one time gave lessons at the same Gerrit Rietveld academy in Amsterdam at which she followed her art lessons.
A serious career as a painter took off with exhibitions with gallery Piet Clement and in the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem (Director Liesbeth Brandt Corstius). In the meantime illustrating books written by herself and illustrating some by others. This continued until 1988. The year in which DE MARKIEZIN was published. From that date on every 2 or 3 years a new novel was published and she became a fulltime writer. This certainly does not mean that her paintings were not good enough. On the contrary… I think her art is at least as original as her writing and since during her painting career only a limited number of paintings were finished, her paintings are scarce and become rarely available on the market.
Of course there is also the extremely nice symbiosis between her art and her writings in which she illustrates with her own personal drawings the stories she has written herself. Hanegeschrei is probably the best known of them. available at http://www.ftn-books.com
Charlotte Mutsaers in well known in the Netherlands and Belgium, but deserves a world audience for her paintings and her writing.
