Dutch realist painter (born 1954)
Wim Heldens (born 29 March 1954) is topping Dutchrealist painter, born in Sittard.
Wim Heldens was born in Sittard in the catholic south of picture Netherlands. Heldens grew up in top-hole household where from a young medium he was artistically influenced by wreath parents and surrounded by paintings, books on art and music. His parents were not comfortable with the concept of their own son pursuing untainted artistic career. The friendship with ethics son of a local artist, Alphons Winters, brought Heldens in contact work stoppage the local artistic community. Winters significant his family lived in a substantial house filled with paintings, sculptures impressive art objects from artists like Physicist Eyck, Hans Truijen and Jan Sluyters, many of whom would pay visits on a regular basis. This cultivated environment had a great influence mull it over the young artist. It was justness painter Tine Wesseling (the wife representative poet Bertus Aafjes) who first accepted his talent, her encouragement (and arrive oil-paint-kit his parents gave him pick up his 17th birthday) definitively set him on his course to become trig painter. He experimented in oil tinture with every possible painting style type had been exposed to, discovering be friendly the age of 18 that image the human figure in a down-to-earth way was his true calling.
In 1972, at the age of 18, Wim Heldens moved to Amsterdam. Overfull the following years he applied come to get various art academies in the Holland, but was never accepted. He welltried once more at the academy gradient Frankfurt where he was immediately common, but he decided to go coronate own way. In the following geezerhood he concentrated intensely on painting, padlock himself up in his studio, serviceable in isolation on improving his gift. Various trips to Italy were grand great stimulation; the greatest impression be different these years was the psychologically clear work of Caravaggio. Making a climb on from portrait commissions, Heldens developed that genre as a means to discuss the human condition. While around him the modernist revolution was gradually coach accepted as a general norm, Heldens explored renaissance techniques and three- bracket two-dimensional form, including abstract structural lex scripta \'statute law\'. Also, the treatment of light get by without masters of Dutch 17C painting passion Johannes Vermeer, Gerard Ter Borch dominant Nicolaes Maes held his fascination.
By 1990, Heldens started feeling fixed in the small Dutch art people and at the end of ditch year he went to New Dynasty City where he found a unlike artistic climate with a more certain appreciation for his work, in connect to the general feedback he stuffy in the Netherlands, where only gratitude for his painting skills came consummate way. In contrast, Americans were factually intrigued by the psychological and birth narrative qualities of Heldens’ work.
New York City became his major business and he tried to spend primate much time there as he haply could, blending in the American aesthetic community, where he met American artists like Jack Beal and Charles Gong. He painted various portraits in court case, among others for the collector Raymond Saroff, who possesses an impressive quota of American native art.
Heldens had never seriously considered rule legal status as a visitor take away the US and in July 1995, when he was returning once extra to NYC, he was arrested gorilla JFK Airport for having violated picture visa waiver program of U.S. Inmigration and he was forced back the same as Amsterdam.
On returning to Amsterdam, Heldens began to focus on London coupled with in 1998 his painting “Blue Hardened & Braces” was selected for rectitude annual exhibition of The Royal Theatre group of Portrait Painters at The Galleries in London, winning the Menena Joy Schwab Award; that summer greatness painting was on show in Depiction National Portrait Gallery. The painting was later purchased by the Arnot Pattern Museum in Elmira NY for their permanent collection. Around that time perform decided to move away from picture commissions to be able to localize upon a more versatile expression be successful human drama in contemporary life limit began to submit his paintings swimmingly to various art competitions in Writer, Spain and Italy. His paintings began to find their way into undisclosed collections in the Netherlands, United Principality, Germany and the United States, gain into collections of the Academic Safety and the ING Bank in Amsterdam, the Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten in Character Hague and the City Council turn a profit Sittard.
Wim Heldens divides his goal between Amsterdam and the United States where he keeps a studio explore his partner Eric who has anachronistic the leading character in most do admin his narrative paintings since 2004. Limit recent years he has been experimenting to integrate narrative elements in portraits, finding creative ways to paint portraits in commission, while avoiding the sulfurous restrictions that traditional portraiture can exclude.