Ans Wortel
| Ans Wortel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Anna Maria Wortel 18 October 1929 Alkmaar, Netherlands |
| Died | 4 December 1996 (aged 67) Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Known for | Painting, drawing, printmaking, poetry, writing, sculpting, glass art |
| Awards | First prize at the biennale of Paris in 1963 |
Ans (Anna Maria) Wortel (18 October 1929, in Alkmaar, Netherlands – 4 December 1996, in Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands) was a Dutch painter, poet and writer. She made gouaches and oil paintings, aquarelles, drawings, collages, lithographs, etchings, sculptures and glass sculptures. She was an autodidact and has won the first prize at the biennale of Paris in 1963. She was one of the leading female artists of postwar Dutch modern art.
Wortel’s work is strongly autobiographical. Her experiences as a girl, woman, mother and as an artist were mainly the source of her inspiration. Common themes are human emotions, love, relationships, mother/child relations and social criticism.
Up until the late 1950s there was a search for a personal style. Artwork from that time varies and shows characteristics of different artists, such as Katsushika Hokusai, Willem de Kooning, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Wifredo Lam and Karel Appel. In the late 1950s her artistic style eventually flows into her very own style which is best described as abstract figurative art. It often consists of naked woman, man or child figures, sometimes recognizable, but always deformed. These human figures are together, search each other, embrace each other or repel each other. The figures are in unspecified spaces. The moon, the sun and the contours of earth often recur in her work. Mostly her work is accompanied by handwritten poetical lines.
Wortel has had numerous exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad, amongst others:
There were also expositions and contributions of Wortel at various events, such as (selection):
There are some 50 books and booklets with contributions from or about Wortel.
She wrote several Dutch collections of poetry in which her visual art and her poetry come together.
In 1980 she started her autobiography which was finilized in 1986 (5 volumes in Dutch).
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