Jip WIJNGAARDEN

Jip Wijngaarden was born in Amsterdam in 1964 and raised in the countryside. From her childhood she loved nature and discovered a passion for drawing.

In the 80s she studied styling, drawing and decoration in Utrecht and developed a strong sensitivity for color and contrast. Her goal is to enter the Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1982, thanks to a combination of circumstances, she was chosen from 3000 young girls to play the role of Anne Frank in a Dutch play and later in a TV movie.

Jip moves to Amsterdam thinking she can return to her studies after a year of interruption. Nevertheless the role of Anne Frank propels her into the world of comedy for ten years when she becomes a renowned actress. During this time, however, she did not abandon her passion for drawing, created sets and costumes for the theater, made sketches and painted canvases in the former studio of the painter and photographer GH Breitner, which she used as an apartment.

She likes to hang out in the Stedelijk Museum where she finds her main sources of inspiration. She is fascinated by the colors of the abstract works of Willem de Kooning, the delicacy of the paintings by Paul Klee, the monumental works of Anselm Kiefer and later the figurative paintings by Jozef Israëls.

 

France | Swiss

In 1990 Jip married French sound engineer Philippe Combes and moved to Paris. The two find faith in the God of the Bible, which profoundly changes the way they see things.

Later the couple settled near Geneva where Philippe found a job on Swiss French television. During the following years, Jip withdrew more and more from the scene to devote herself entirely to painting. This remains her favorite art, but she also begins to sculpt and embarks on engraving, of which she learns the first rudiments in a small workshop in Rolle. She also studies Hebrew at the Jewish House in Geneva.

 

Her style

Far from artistic circles and allergic to all that is fashion and trend of the market Jip paints like she prays, intimate, vulnerable, as if no one should ever see her works one day. On her lonely path she gradually comes to find a style that could best be described as figurative expressionism. Her oil-painted canvases, in intense colors, are often dotted with Hebrew letters, symbolic objects that send us back to a certain vision of the world and undoubtedly give a Jewish tone to her work.

On her painting we meet faces with marked features and eloquent looks, as if they had something important to tell us.

In a way, they invite us to join them, to enter their world where there is room for pain, consolation, dismay and hope.

Jip Wijngaarden is primarily interested in human emotion. Many times she composes her scenes around one or a few characters but even if there is no visible person on the canvas there is always someone present, precisely in his absence.

There is a meditative side in the art of Jip; her paintings are born from contemplation and invite reflection!

Hier first art exhibition, a commemorative exhibition on the Shoah, takes place in the old synagogue in Kampen (NL) and will be followed by many others.

After a large number of exhibitions in the Netherlands and Switzerland, the couple moved to the French Cévennes.