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In the 1950s and 1960s, Frieda Hunziker was considered a remarkable and progressive artist who knew what she stood for. From an early age she showed artistic talents and a strong individuality and ambition, which meant that she did not go unnoticed in her time. After primary school, Frieda trained for fashion and pattern drawing at the Industrial School for Female Youth. Thanks to Huib Luns, she was then able to start at the National Institute for the Training of Drawing Teachers in Amsterdam. In her final year she also obtained the Certificate of Competence for industrial education. When Frieda married Willem Swart in 1934, she immediately lost her job, which she had had at the Haarlem Household and Industrial School since 1930. Frieda then set up the attic of the house she lived in with her husband on the Tuyll van Serooskerkenweg as her 'workshop'. There she started working as a free artist and started painting with oil paint. She also worked as a volunteer substitute at schools, made contacts with other artists, traveled – especially to Italy and Paris – and visited museums at home and abroad. In Paris Frieda met the brothers Willy and Frans Boers and Anton Rooskens.
Even after Frieda and Willem had a son – Frits – in 1937, Frieda continued to make contacts with artists, including Ger Gerrits, Paul Citroen, Wim Kersten. Her husband Willem is not happy with this, as a woman with a child she should not work and the artistic environment would have a bad influence on her. The marriage did not last and the divorce was granted at the end of 1940. Frieda is given custody of Frits and she continues to live on the Tuyll van Serooskerkenweg. She immediately started working at various economics schools and continued to work steadily in her studio. Her work in this period, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and interiors, already reflects her strong sense of plane proportions and decorative slant. In 1941 she took part in her first – and for the time being last – exhibition at Galerie Robert in Amsterdam. During wartime, this gallery opens its doors to five artists born after 1900. In addition to Frieda, the brothers Willy and Frans Boers, Gerrit van 't Net and Saroachim Salim are exhibiting. When the Chamber of Culture was established in November 1941, all five refused to register. Frieda then tries to get through the wartime by searching for her own style, making use of things that were close to her; pots, a tray, summer or autumn fruit on a bed of leaves, fish that she could still get at the market, or a vase with a bouquet of flowers on a chair - after all, traveling was no longer possible. She uses Willy Boers' studio when she accommodates people in hiding in her studio attic.
After the end of the war, Frieda now has a permanent position as a teacher at the Nieuwe Huishoudschool in Amsterdam, and in 1945 she participates in the exhibition 'Art in Freedom' in the Rijksmuseum. Here, painters who refused to become members of the Kultuurkamer during the war were given the opportunity to show their work again. A year later, Frieda participates in a group of 12 like-minded painters in the exhibition 'Art in Freedom' in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. These twelve artists – Frieda is the only female member among Willy Boers, Ger Gerrits, Jan Roëde, and others – unite in 1947 in the group Vrij Beelden, which is committed to 'a better understanding of non-figurative art' and feels not restricted by a common formal language. Each member looked for a personal way of working, finding inspiration in cubism and abstract art. For Frieda it meant that after her early work, which was characterized by a simplified, realistic style, she moved to complete abstraction in 1948, in which powerful colors support the composition. The Vrij Beelden group regularly exhibits in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and took a full place alongside the Experimentals and Cobra in the pursuit of non-figuration. Frieda was the only woman in the group and also one of the most active members.
In the meantime, Frieda starts a relationship with Piet Bosman, whom she met through her colleague painter Piet Ouburg, and moves with him to Van Breestraat 34. This relationship only lasts for a few years. She continues to live on the Van Breestraat, where her parents also move in in 1950. In those years she increasingly participates in exhibitions in, among others, the Stedelijk Museum or Museum Fodor in Amsterdam and the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and various exhibitions in England and Paris. In 1949, Frieda won a competition, organized by KLM, to make drawings based on aerial photographs. She then creates a series of paintings based on her drawings which are exhibited under the title 'Bird Flight' in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. At the Stedelijk she works as a tour guide and coordinator at the invitation of Mr. Sandberg, who regularly organizes exhibitions with abstract art in which Frieda also participates. He also mediates her participation in exhibitions in Paris, Antwerp, Germany and South America. In 1951, KLM invited Frieda to travel abroad at their expense and she opted for a two-month trip to tropical Curaçao. This 'fantastically rhythmic, fascinating and colourful country' inspired Frieda to create many colourful compositions, which demonstrate a clear shift in her way of working, from purely abstract to more figurative. She applies bright coluors in small areas, which gave her work a very expressive and dynamic character. After her return to the Netherlands, this work formed the basis for an exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in 1953, 'Curaçao, painting and painted'. In the late 1950s she arrived at a style that characterizes the last period of her work. She paints in undulating movements across the boundaries of the planes towards abstract expressionism. The bright colours from the early 1950s are darkened and put on the canvas with whites, blues and greens in different techniques.
Frieda Hunziker belonged to the top Dutch post-war artists. She participated in the most important exhibitions: from 1946 until her death in 1966, every year there is an exhibition somewhere in the Netherlands in which Frieda took part, and since 1948 she has been exhibiting across national borders. Her participation in the 1953 Biennale of São Paolo is striking. But even after her death there are regular exhibitions of and with her work. Hans Jaffé wrote in 1961: 'In Dutch visual art, Frieda's work is distinguished by its personal and fierce qualities. Her oil paintings, gouaches and wax crayon drawings as a whole form a rich and fertile oeuvre, in which a continuous and flourishing development can be seen. Even after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she continued to work unabated, had a new house built for her and Frits and made her last painting two weeks before her death, with the help of Frits.
