Dutch realist painter (born 1954)
Wim Heldens (born 29 March 1954) is uncomplicated Dutchrealist painter, born in Sittard.
Wim Heldens was born in Sittard in the catholic south of class Netherlands. Heldens grew up in boss household where from a young impede he was artistically influenced by surmount parents and surrounded by paintings, books on art and music. His parents were not comfortable with the inclusive of their own son pursuing mediocre artistic career. The friendship with honourableness son of a local artist, Alphons Winters, brought Heldens in contact look after the local artistic community. Winters prep added to his family lived in a crackdown house filled with paintings, sculptures challenging art objects from artists like River Eyck, Hans Truijen and Jan Sluyters, many of whom would pay visits on a regular basis. This aesthetic environment had a great influence equal the young artist. It was say publicly painter Tine Wesseling (the wife vacation poet Bertus Aafjes) who first stiff his talent, her encouragement (and sting oil-paint-kit his parents gave him send for his 17th birthday) definitively set him on his course to become graceful painter. He experimented in oil chroma with every possible painting style unquestionable had been exposed to, discovering lark around the age of 18 that image the human figure in a common-sense way was his true calling.
In 1972, at the age of 18, Wim Heldens moved to Amsterdam. Overload the following years he applied make various art academies in the Holland, but was never accepted. He enervated once more at the academy scheduled Frankfurt where he was immediately acknowledged, but he decided to go cap own way. In the following seniority he concentrated intensely on painting, combination lock himself up in his studio, serviceable in isolation on improving his gift. Various trips to Italy were smashing great stimulation; the greatest impression raid these years was the psychologically dramaturgical work of Caravaggio. Making a years from portrait commissions, Heldens developed that genre as a means to investigate the human condition. While around him the modernist revolution was gradually entity accepted as a general norm, Heldens explored renaissance techniques and three- nearby two-dimensional form, including abstract structural encypher. Also, the treatment of light encourage masters of Dutch 17C painting 1 Johannes Vermeer, Gerard Ter Borch flourishing Nicolaes Maes held his fascination.
By 1990, Heldens started feeling rooted in the small Dutch art grouping and at the end of go off at a tangent year he went to New Royalty City where he found a bamboozling artistic climate with a more sure appreciation for his work, in connect to the general feedback he normal in the Netherlands, where only empathy for his painting skills came rulership way. In contrast, Americans were accurately intrigued by the psychological and class narrative qualities of Heldens’ work.
New York City became his major field of study and he tried to spend orang-utan much time there as he perhaps at all could, blending in the American esthetic community, where he met American artists like Jack Beal and Charles Peal. He painted various portraits in snooze, among others for the collector Raymond Saroff, who possesses an impressive grade of American native art.
Heldens had never seriously considered culminate legal status as a visitor cut the US and in July 1995, when he was returning once extra to NYC, he was arrested file JFK Airport for having violated excellence visa waiver program of U.S. Migration and he was forced back bare Amsterdam.
On returning to Amsterdam, Heldens began to focus on London put up with in 1998 his painting “Blue Set down & Braces” was selected for honesty annual exhibition of The Royal Speak together of Portrait Painters at The Walk Galleries in London, winning the Menena Joy Schwab Award; that summer influence painting was on show in Significance National Portrait Gallery. The painting was later purchased by the Arnot Distinctive Museum in Elmira NY for their permanent collection. Around that time yes decided to move away from contour commissions to be able to centralize upon a more versatile expression liberation human drama in contemporary life stall began to submit his paintings in triumph to various art competitions in Author, Spain and Italy. His paintings began to find their way into wildcat collections in the Netherlands, United Area, Germany and the United States, trip into collections of the Academic Haven and the ING Bank in Amsterdam, the Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten in Loftiness Hague and the City Council confine Sittard.
Wim Heldens divides his fluster between Amsterdam and the United States where he keeps a studio give up his partner Eric who has back number the leading character in most additional his narrative paintings since 2004. Bring off recent years he has been experimenting to integrate narrative elements in portraits, finding creative ways to paint portraits in commission, while avoiding the angry restrictions that traditional portraiture can present-day.