west wing

Anne Marie Blaupot ten Cate – A Small Overview

February 21 – June 7, 2026

Anne Marie Blaupot ten Cate was born in 1902 in Friesland and grew up in Arnhem. After her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and the Rijksacademy in Amsterdam, she made many international trips, including to France, Spain, Switzerland, Morocco, and the Dutch East Indies. In connection with the recently published book Anne Marie Blaupot ten Cate – A Tumultuous Life by Hanneke Boonstra, Museum Belvédère has curated an exhibition featuring the few known artworks by her.

In her painting, Blaupot ten Cate followed the stylistic trends of her time, with a particular focus on the female portrait in the 1930s and an open view of the developments in modern art in the years after the war. While her early, realistically oriented work is characterized by a fine sense of color values, in her later paintings, she explored the possibilities of more intense color use and various forms of abstraction.

Dirk Bakker – Image Riddles

February 21 – June 7, 2026

Visual artist Dirk Bakker (1949–2021) painted in relative isolation, with a keen sense for color, form, and composition, creating the most whimsical depictions. While his work shares stylistic similarities with artists from the New Figuration movement, it strikes a completely different tone. Bakker’s paintings lack the seriousness and often intellectual approach typical of other figurative artists, instead exuding the disarming atmosphere of children's book illustrations. But however playful, accessible, and humorous Bakker's paintings may appear, there often lurks something unsettling in these surreal visual riddles—an underlying expression of the inner conflicts of an artist who struggled to connect with the outside world.

When Dirk Bakker and his wife were forced to move due to illness, there was no one to take care of his art. Beyond their control, hundreds of paintings were sent to second-hand stores. Shortly afterward, Dirk Bakker passed away, and his artist friend Theo de Feyter learned what had happened to his work. With great effort, he managed to rescue a small portion, from which Museum Belvédère made a selection as a tribute to this unique artistic career.

A publication titled Dirk Bakker – Image Riddles, with a text by Theo de Feyter, will be released in conjunction with the exhibition.

Jan Jordens – Schiermonnikoog

February 21 – June 7, 2026

Jan Jordens (1883–1962) was one of the founding members of the Groningen artists' group De Ploeg, though he was less in the spotlight during the pre-war years compared to figures like Jan Wiegers, Jan Altink, and Johan Dijkstra. After his retirement as a drawing teacher, he was able to fully focus on his artistic career, and became one of the pioneers of modern art in the North of the Netherlands. One of the highlights of his post-war work are the watercolors he created during his annual summer stays on Schiermonnikoog, depicting dunes and fir trees. The small exhibition that Museum Belvédère has curated in connection with the release of the book De Ploeg on Schiermonnikoog shows how Jordens found complete freedom in watercolor painting, how figuration dissolves into abstraction, and how sensory perceptions under his painter’s hand transform into sensations of light and color.

Marije Bouman – Elements

February 21 – June 7, 2026

The ELEMENTS series by artist Marije Bouman (1971) is the result of an exploration into the space that arises within small, vertical works on paper, using landscape elements. Clouds become mountains, the earth dissolves into the sky, a road winds off into the distance beyond the horizon, and water reflects more light than air. "These are observations detached from logical thinking," Bouman explains. "For me, this creates an opening into the space of the mind."

Marije Bouman lives and works in Heerenveen and is represented in the collection of Museum Belvédère with several works.

A publication was released in conjunction with the exhibition, combining a selection from the ELEMENTS series with fragments from an important 11th-century treatise by the Chinese ink painter Kwo Sji.

ON THE COVER

Jaap Jungcurt – Karel Beunis

11 October 2025 – extended to April 2026

In 1957, Dutch publishing house De Bezige Bij launched its now-famous Literaire Pockets series in response to the success other publishers had found with inexpensive, compact, and simply bound paperback editions.

De Bezige Bij was the first publisher in the Netherlands to focus specifically on contemporary literature by a young generation of Dutch writers and poets, alternating with translated literary works.

The Literaire Pocket series stood out not only for its literary content but especially for the visual design. The covers featured striking, abstract compositions that echoed the modern art of the time.

These visual designs covered the entire front cover and had no direct connection to the book’s content—a groundbreaking approach for a paperback series. This bold graphic identity aligned perfectly with the publisher’s goal: to create a modern book series for modern readers.

The covers were designed by visual artist Jaap Jungcurt (1923–2018) and graphic designer Karel Beunis (1933–1983). Over the years, they collaborated on the Literaire Pockets (1957–1966), the Literaire Reuzenpockets (1959–1969), and other series for De Bezige Bij.

Their first series, the Literaire Pockets, set the tone, and with over 100 cover designs, offers an almost complete overview of the styles and techniques explored in their collaboration—ranging from collage and felt-tip drawings to écriture automatique.