Anne Marie Blaupot ten Cate artwork • painting • previously for sale A self portrait

What's striking about this portrait is its personal appeal, which is both self-aware and reserved. The sober use of color and the stylized shape provide space to experience this. As a result, it has become a very personal portrait. Anne Marie Blaupot ten Cate, Frisian by birth, belonged to the small group of women who moved to Paris in the 1920s, in those days the Mecca of modern art. She took lessons with the cubist André L'Hote, who counted several celebrities among his students. This painting was probably made in these Parisian years (1926-1928) or just after. In Paris she enjoyed the artist's life. She was often to be found in the company of the pacesetter Tjerk Bottema and the sculptor Han Wezelaar, who was influenced by the cubist expressionism of his teacher Ossip Zadkine. Barely 26 years old, 'Marie' got her first exhibition at the Paris Galerie Alice Manteau. After her return to the Netherlands, a life of travel began and her art evolved into a colorful, expressionist design in which mood and feeling are given free rein. In the 1950s she switched to abstraction, in which her emotional life also plays a major role in addition to the subconscious. She herself thought that painting was close to composing music, poetry and dancing. This will to give precedence to her inner life over an accurate representation of reality is again the core of her work.