ANTIFAZ || Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Marion van Nieuwpoort (Dutch artist) 1950 - 2008
Colombina-I, 2002
oil on canvas
100 x 120 cm.
signed Marion van Nieuwpoort
private collection

BORN TO BE A PAINTER
Marion was born on the outskirts of the city of The Hague, where the new estates of the Royal Residence stopped and abruptly changes into the empty space of meadows, ditches and willow shrubs. This is where her love of nature stems from. She was an outdoor child and rather played with the animals in the Zuiderpark children's farm, than indoor with the doll's pram. She learned art at her father's knee. He was a painter and made paintings on the Metropole's Theatre façade, which served as advertisements for the films on show. She could gape in admiration at his monumental pieces of over 10 square metres, representing dramatic excerpts of the film in the background and the more than life-sized portraits of the main characters as eye-catchers.
Her father was her early example. In his occupation as a painter, which has fascinated her right from her childhood, he showed an innate touch for decoration which he loved to share with his daughter. His profession involved that painting materials were all over the place at home, and her parents never objected if she wanted to make use of them. Even in her earliest memories she was occupied with pencil, paint and paper.
She was playing outside in nature, or she was at home, busy drawing. At school she always took the drawing lessons seriously, not because she was so obedient, but because she loved them. She always had the feeling that she was born to be a painter.
The art academy was an obvious step on the road to the painting profession. When she was 23 years old, she went to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the Hague. At 28 she completed her education. Even before attending the academy, in the period after her secondary education, she took drawing lessons form the painter Poen de Wijs.
Her period at the academy was important to Marion van Nieuwpoort. She looks back upon it with satisfaction. From her teacher, the Rotterdam painter Rien Bout, she learned how to include the surroundings in her subject, that background is as functional as foreground, and to have a keen eye for the overall picture. In her work colour occupies a major place. She is a full-blooded colourist. Her work ‘breathes colour’. It makes her work come to life, just as oxygen fills the lungs and replenished the blood. Rien Bout influenced her play with colours and her use of the uncountable variations of the colour palette.
The painter Hermanus Berserik also played a part in her development. From him she learned the function of structure, division and composition. These are important elements to a painter like Marion van Nieuwpoort, who wants to express her sense of movement, dynamics and passionate style, but is tied to the straitjacket of the two dimensionality of the canvas.
With satisfaction, Marion can claim to have managed to make her profession of her innate passion: painting. A profession she was devoted to.
From experience Marion knew that people tend to have the wrong idea about her method of working. Contrary to what is generally assumed, she not merely throws some paint on the canvas and had the painting ready within a few days. The creation of a work was a time-consuming process. Each line has been planned and was carefully drawn.
The themes of Marion’s paintings are very diverse, but they are all about the important aspects of her life. Ever since her youth the sea has exerted an enormous attraction on her. The panorama, the seaside, the sound of rolling waves, the briny air, sea-gulls flying over, all this inspired her to make a series of seascapes. Also her love of animals can be recognized in her paintings. In a very sensitive manner she not only delineates the essence of a cat, a dog or a pigeon, but also of a buffalo, a lion or a cheetah. Since her travels to Kenya, together with Poen de Wijs, her husband, wild animals have often been the main theme of here work.
And then there is dance. Marion danced herself, this subject fascinated here. This form of expression, important in all cultures, is passionately depicted by her in paintings of dancing Massai and Western prima ballerinas.
To live as an autonomous painter, to travel to far-away countries, to exhibit and sell paintings, was more than Marion had dreamed of when leaving the academy. Years later, driving a jeep over the Kenyan savannah, she realizes her dream has come true. By pleasant but very hard work she had accomplished the apparently unattainable.
Marion van Nieuwpoort, born in The Hague in1950 and died of cancer in 2008. Artists have a special privilege: they are immortal. Their spirits will always live on in the work they leave in this world.

Text: Prof. Dr. Ruud Lapré