an inventory and documentary of art environments in Europe created by non-professionals
June 06, 2025
Anton Heyboer, Kleurrijk gedecoreerde galerie / Colorfully decorated gallery
images are screenprints from the video in the documentation
The mages in this post represent the decorations applied to the walls and the courtyard of a farmhouse with outbuildings in Den Ilp, a small community in the polder-rich rural area north of Amsterdam.
Life and works
It is the village where Anton Heyboer (1924-2005) went to live in 1961, where he subsequently in the 1960s and 70s became a well known Dutch painter, in 1984 severed all his ties with the established art world and in 2005 died in his sleep.
A lively, in the 1940s traumatic life as a young man
Anton Heyboer was born in Sabang in Indonesia on 9 February 1924, after five months the family moved to Haarlem, in 1925 to Delft, in 1929 to Voorburg, all locations in the Netherlands.
From 1933 to 1938 the family lived in Curaçao, then for some time in New York and before 1940 they moved to Haarlem again.
When in 1940 the German army invaded the Netherlands, the young Anton Heyboer was sixteen years old. Around that time he followed a training as a mechanical engineer.
However, in 1943 he was arrested by the Germans and taken to Germany to work there as a forced laborer, a traumatic experience. He managed to escape and went into hiding in Vinkeveen, a small village south of Amsterdam.
After the Second World War
When the Second World War was over, Heyboer settled in a village in the east of the Netherlands. Here he began to focus on making paintings in a traditional style, which led to his first exhibition in 1946 in another village in the east of the Netherlands.
In 1948 he married and had a son, but his wife divorced him in 1953.
In 1948 he also met the painter Jan Kagie with whom he wandered through France for several months, drawing and painting.
In 1951, Heyboer for a while was voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital, this to find assistance in a process of self-realization which had to do with the war trauma he had acquired when staying in Germany.
In 1956 he married Erna Kramer with whom he was together for seven years and had a daughter.
In 1960 when he was 36, Heyboer met 19 year old Maria, who became the first of the five so-called brides who would join him in living in the art gallery in the community of Den Ilp.
The period of his stay in Den Ilp
In 1961 Heyboer settled in the small community of Den Ilp, where he had bought a piece of land with a cowshed, a terrain he expanded with a variety of other outbuildings.
The community of Den Ilp is situated north of Amsterdam in a rural area, richly provided with meadows. For him such a rural location was a considerably better location to live and work than the big city.
Over the years, apart from Maria, four more women ("brides") came to live with Heyboer in his gallery in Den Ilp, all of them interesting, intelligent women, who liked to be together with Anton Heyboer.
The 1960s and 70s would be the period in which he became quite well known as an artist who produced sought-after paintings. His work was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was exhibited at the Documenta in Kassel, and he had major exhibitions at the Municipal Museum in Den Haag and the Municipal Museum in Amsterdam (1975).
It was also the period in which he transformed the gallery into an art environment. The images in this post give an impression of the colorful decorations that were not only applied to all the walls of the various buildings, but also adorned the spacious courtyard.
In 1984 Heyboer severed all his ties with the established art world. He continued to work in seclusion in his house in Den Ilp.
In doing so, he also distanced himself in a certain way from the works with which he had previously achieved success, and thus, for example, he repainted almost all of the works that had been exhibited in the Municipal Museum in Amsterdam in 1975.
Anton Heyboer died in his sleep on April 9, 2005 at the age of 81 in his still colourfully decorated home in Den Ilp and was buried in a nearby cemetery in a rural area.
Artistic legacy
The Anton Heyboer Foundation, managed by the Museum van de Geest (Museum of the Mind)in Haarlem, is committed to preserving the legacy of Anton Heyboer.
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