H.E. Eduardo Ibarrola, Ambassador of Mexico and Alejandra Saldaña, daughter of the artist.
Exhibition Mexican Embassy – November 2016
The Ambassador of Mexico H.E. Eduardo Ibarrola hosted an impressive exhibition at the well known Embassy gallery to celebrate the life of the Mexican / Dutch artist Nancy van Oververldt 1930 – 2015 “Vivencias Mexicanas, my Mexican Experiences”.
Many diplomats, art collectors and people related to art in different ways attended the vernissage including the daughter of the artist Alejandra Saldaña, who actually live in Lelystad.
This exhibition focuses on the paintings and life of the artist Nancy van Overveldt who worked and lived in Mexico for 25 years, from 1952 till the end of the seventies, when she returns to The Netherlands.
Born in 1930 in The Hague, Nancy van Overveldt studied painting at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1951 she continued with her study on painting in Paris and in 1952 Nancy left for Mexico, driven by a deep longing to discover a new world.
In Mexico Nancy van Overveldt found herself in a world of brilliant light and huge dimensions, where people live amidst the interplay of cosmic forces. There she lived many lives and made her experiences visible in her paintings, on which we see naïve realism, compositions of the absurd and impressionistic figures captured in scenes of Mexican parties. The wonderful soul of Mexico with its hospitable people, the bright colors, festivals, dances, rites and music, had a great influence in the development of her work as a painter. She used to merge into Mexican life and travelled throughout the country in local buses, walking, over mountains to remote villages, sharing life and rites with the local people and at the end transforming these experiences into beautiful paintings, portraits and drawings in her specific style.
Painting was always an organic process for her, were colors and rhythms emerged on the canvas without being conceived on forehand.
In México Nancy van Overveldt achieved fame through many exhibitions including the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Galería Antonio Souza and Galería Chapultepec. For more than forty years she was a member of the Artist’s Association of Mexico, ‘El Salon de la Plástica Mexicana’, and exhibited there several times.
Under the pseudonym ‘Dolores Cienfuegos’ Nancy captured her experiences also in the book of stories “Vivencias Mexicanas”.
Still, Nancy never lost her Dutch roots. In a time when the bike was a rarity in the hectic streets of México City, it was for Nancy van Overveldt the most natural thing in the world to take her daughters to school on the bike.
In the seventies, her work expressed movements of water, fire and air. Paintings called ‘Transformations’ appear; huge colourful canvases were forms continuously merge into other forms that often culminate in the figure of a bird, which seems to fly out of the canvas. These expressive transformation paintings, mark the beginning of a new period of Nancy van Overveldt’s life where she decided to return to Holland.
In 1976 Nancy returned to the Netherlands. In this more dark and compact world a new path to follow developed, by observing nature were birds, trees, clouds and the repetitive reflections on dark water become ever smaller and are drawn to the low light on the horizon.
From 1980, the horizon would become the source of Nancy’s inspiration. From one point on the canvas, round and pointed patterns emerge becoming larger like an explosion, as they spiral out to the edges. It takes months to bring harmony into these playful patterns. Later, living in the polder landscape of Lelystad, her work is influenced by spaces, wind and sunrays and continues to develop. In her latest paintings, the horizon becomes an arch and openings are created to other spaces where interesting figures tell amazing stories.
Nancy van Overveldt painted every single day of her life and continued painting till the end of her life, June 2015, when she passed away.
This exhibition, focuses on her earliest paintings made in México, and portrays on one hand, the swirling, colorful life of Mexico and on the other hand is a selection of the Transformation paintings and a subsequent period, that of entering her inner world, amidst the more structured Dutch atmosphere, were she later pictures the changing colors of the seasons in rhythmic landscapes with horses, bulls, birds and bicycles.
Nancy van Overveldt in her own unique way, was a bridge between these two beautiful worlds Mexico and The Netherlands, that represented the source of inspiration for her paintings.
The reception hosted at the Mexican Gallery in The Hague greets Nancy’s art and Mexican general culture as well.
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For visits or additional information:
Mexican Embassy: cultura@embamex.nl / 070 310 8957
Website: nancyvanoverveldtcollection.com
Email: infoart@nancyvanoverveldtcollection.com / +31(0)3565810
