Artist : Marcelle Hanselaar
Title : Who’s a Pretty Boy Then
Medium : oil on canvas
Dimensions : 108 x 82 cm


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Marcelle Hanselaar was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Growing up in the formal atmosphere of a protestant, postwar country, proved, thanks to her drop-out/turn-on rebellion, a profound source of inspiration for the recurring subject matter in Hanselaar’s work; namely the fierce and sometimes troubled cohabitation with those raw desires, secret fantasies and uncultivated instincts and our functioning in a civil society. Although Hanselaar studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, her lust for adventure, guided by a quest for self-discovery, led her to years of travel, until, in the early 1980’s she settled down in her studio in London where she still lives. Self-taught, she started out as an abstract painter before turning to figuration. At the same time she became fascinated by etching, its harsh, bitten line seemed to perfectly suit her subject matter. As an artist Hanselaar looks for ways to express those illusive questions of who and what we are when the mask is off, and how we appear when the mask is on. The shock effect of her work lies in the contrast of combining her outspoken subject matter with the conventional medium of oil painting or etching. Both her paintings and her prints display her delight and fascination with theatrical illusions and although often peppered with a biting sense of humour, the works reveals her own vibrant understanding of human nature, in all its animosity and fragility.

Hanselaar has exhibited her paintings and prints internationally, and can be found in private and public collections worldwide including British Museum Prints Collection, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Print Collection, New York; V & A Prints & Drawings Collection, London; V & A National Art Library, London; Whithworth Art Gallery and Museum; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Clifford Chance Art Collection, London; The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, London; Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, US; University of Arizona, Tucson, US; Sakimi Art Museum, Okinawa, Japan; Guandong Fine Art Museum, Guandong, China; Iraq National Library, Baghdad; Meermanno Museum-House of the Book, The Hague; Soho House Amsterdam; AMC, Amsterdam; Amsterdam Arts Council; Kunstcollectie; Gemeente Haaksbergen, NL; University of Aberystwyth Print Collection, Wales; New Hall Art Collection, University of Cambridge; Clare Hall, Cambridge; The Ned, London; Rabo Bank, London; Merrill Lynch, London; Risk Publications, London; Mitsukoshi Ltd., London and Paintings in Hospitals, London