Bettina Heinen-Ayech

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Bettina Heinen-Ayech (born September 3, 1937 in Solingen ; † June 7, 2020 in Munich ) was a German painter . She became known for her colorful landscapes of Algeria .

biography

Bettina Heinen was the daughter of of Bauchem originating journalist Johann Jakob Josef "Hanns" Heinen (1895-1961), long-time editor of the Solinger Tageblatt and the industry newspaper Eberswalde offer sheet , which as a poet and playwright operated. Her mother Erna, née Steinhoff (1898–1969), was born in Düsseldorf and came from a Westphalian family in the Soest area. Bettina Heinen had three siblings, two brothers and a sister; the children grew up in a parental home characterized by art and openness in Solingen. The family lived in an old half-timbered housein the district of Höhscheid , which Heinen continued to live in during the stays in her hometown until old age.

During the Second World War , Bettina Heinen lived with her mother and sister in Kreuzthal-Eisenbach near Isny im Allgäu from 1942 , later the painter and friend of the family, Erwin Bowien (1899–1972), joined them in 1942 after ten years in the Netherlands had returned to Germany and was on the run from the Nazi authorities . The father Hanns Heinen followed in 1944 after he had published an article about the real situation in Germany. Arrest warrants were received against him and Bowien in Kreuzthal, which "tore up the postwoman," as Heinen later stated.

From 1948 to 1954, Heinen attended the August-Dicke-Girls High School in Solingen , where a teacher recognized and promoted her talent. She received her first artistic training from Bowien, who remained her mentor until his death . From 1954 she attended the Cologne factory schools and there the class for monumental wall painting by Otto Gerster , three preliminary classes were waived. In 1955, works by Bettina Heinen - 20 watercolors and drawings - were exhibited in the Kursaal in Bad Homburg for the first time. Pictures of the then 18-year-old Bettina Heinen were included by the Frankfurt gallery owner Hanna Bekker vom Rath in the group exhibition German Art of the Present (1955/56), in which these alongside works of art by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , Paul Klee , Max Beckmann , Max Ernst , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Käthe Kollwitz were shown on a tour through South America, Africa and Asia. Schmidt-Rottluff advised her: "Bettina, stay true to you!"

This was followed by studies with Hermann Kaspar at the Munich Art Academy and trips to Ticino . From 1958 Heinen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen and made the first of several trips to Norway , where she bought a hut at the foot of the Seven Sisters . In 1959 and 1962, Bettina Heinen received grants from the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia . This was followed by painting stays on Sylt , Ticino, Norway and Paris. In 1962, Bettina Heinen made her first trip to North Africa when she was invited to Cairo by the German Cultural Institute .

In 1960 in Paris, Heinen met her future husband, the Algerian Abdelhamid Ayech (1926-2010), in the Jardin du Luxembourg , when she was painting there with Bowien. Two years after the birth of their daughter Diana in 1961, the family moved to Guelma , the hometown of Ayech in Algeria, which had become independent from France. In 1969 their son Haroun was born. In the decades that followed, Bettina Heinen-Ayech commuted between Solingen and Algeria, where, in search of motifs in her car, “a vehicle that was once born as the R4”, she became a well-known phenomenon, “the inevitable cigarette holder in the corner of her mouth” . Her love for Algeria is also based on her love for her husband Hamid, a "free and courageous man", said Heinen.

In 1968, the first works by Bettina Heinen-Ayech were purchased by the National Museum in Algiers (Musée National des beaux-arts d'Alger) , and in 1976 she was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d'Alger . In the same year she became chairwoman of the Erwin Bowien Circle of Friends (Bowien had died in 1972). In 1992 a retrospective with 120 of her pictures was exhibited at the Musée National des beaux-arts d'Alger . In 1993 she received the Culture Prize of the Solingen Community Foundation Baden . In 2004 a second major retrospective of her works was shown in Algiers; the exhibition was under the patronage of the Algerian minister of culture at the time, Khalida Toumi ; In 2006 she was honored again by the Algerian government. In the same year, while she was away, her house in Solingen was broken into and six paintings by Erwin Bowien were stolen.

Until 2018, Heinen-Ayech's pictures were shown in over 100 solo and numerous group exhibitions in Europe, America and Africa. Her first name "Bettina" established itself as her stage name, also in Arabic spellingبتينا. Bettina Heinen-Ayech's life and work have been portrayed in books and films. In 2012 she returned to Kreuzthal im Allgäu for the first time after the war and was accompanied by a television team from Bayerischer Rundfunk .

plant

Bettina Heinen-Ayech learned all the techniques as part of her training, but she focuses on watercolor painting . As an open-air painter, she created numerous landscapes, rarely portraits . During her stays in Algeria, she developed her own technique: Because of the dry air in Guelma, the watercolors there would not melt into one another as in Europe, but dry quickly. From this she developed her own approach: “I put the strong colors together like a mosaic color line next to color line,” says Heinen-Ayech. The combination of the intense colors would give a vivid picture of the landscapes and light in Algeria. In the years of terrorism from the 1990s to the 2000s in Algeria, she was only able to paint portraits, still lifes and looking out of the window because she could not travel around.

In Algeria, however, not only her technology has changed, but also her personality, says Bettina Heinen-Ayech. She moved away from her “European prejudices” and “listened” to the beautiful nature in Guelma: “The southern mountain, the Mahouna , its fields, captivate and captivate all of my senses and preserve my fantasies. I paint this region in spring when the green of the fields studded with red dots - poppies - shines in all its tones, far from the dense green of Europe, in summer when its blue and purple peaks rise above the wondrous gold of its wheat plains; in winter when the red of the earth has an incredible power that is so difficult to depict! "

As early as 1967 the journalist Max Metzker wrote in the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten about Bettina Heinen-Ayech: “It can open up a landscape even to those who do not know it. The portraits are not only depictions of people, but at the same time they are also portrayals of the soul that go into depth. "

Bettinia Heinen-Ayech died on June 7, 2020 at the age of 82 in Munich.

Exhibitions (selection)

Honors

  • 1976 Bettina Heinen-Ayech receives the Grand Prix de la ville d'Alger
  • 1993 Culture Prize from the Baden Community Foundation , Solingen
  • 1998 The city of Constantine in Algeria honors the artist with a Prix ​​d'honneur
  • 2003 Algerian State Prize, presented by the Minister of Culture, Ms. Khalida Toumi, as an honor for all artistic work
  • 2006 Official honor by the Algerian Ministry of Culture

Publications

  • (as editor) Hanns Heinen: From the fullness of life. Poems . U-shape, Solingen.
  • (as editor) Erwin Bowien: The beautiful game between spirit and world - my life as a painter . ISBN 3-88234-101-7 .
  • (as editor) Erwin Bowien. Catalog of works - Catalog Raisonné - waiver of works . U-Form, Solingen 1999, ISBN 3-88234-103-3 .

literature

  • Eduard Fallet-von Castelberg: Bettina Heinen . Kleiner, Bern 1967. (German / French)
  • Ali Elhadj-Tahar / Hans Karl Pesch: Bettina Heinen-Ayech . U-Form Verlag, Solingen 1982.
  • Marianne Kopatz: Bettina Heinen-Ayech, watercolors and drawings from Algeria. Ed .: Stadtsparkasse Solingen. 1985.
  • Malika Bouabdellah / Diana Millies / Bernard Zimmermann: Bettina Heinen-Ayech retrospective 1951–1992 . Ed .: Stadtsparkasse Solingen. 1992.
  • Malika Bouabdellah: “Bettina” catalog for the retrospective at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts . 1993.
  • Hans Karl Pesch: Bettina, Klaus Wiens collection . 1999, ISBN 3-88234-106-8 .
  • Dalila Mahammed Orfali: "Bettina". Catalog for the retrospective in the Musée National des Beaux-Arts . 2005.
  • Taieb Larak: Bettina, la rencontre d'un peintre et d'un pays. Bettina Heinen-Ayech et l'Algérie . 2007.

Movies

  • 1992 Bettina Heinen-Ayech, Lettre à Erwin Bowien, artist portrait . Hassan Bouabdellah, Visualis Production, Algiers 1992. German version: Bettina Heinen-Ayech, letter to Erwin Bowien. Visualis Production in cooperation with Avalon Film + TV-Produktion, Solingen 1992
  • 2002 Bettina Heinen-Ayech, hymn à la nature . Boualem Aissaoui, CYM Audiovisuel, Algiers
  • 2010 Vanishing Point in the Allgäu - The Art of Memory. Erwin Bowien in the Kreuzthal . 2015. Bavarian Broadcasting. Director: Georg Bayerle

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vetter: Bettina Heynen-Ayech: painter Bettina Heinen-Ayech died at the age of 82. In: rp-online.de. June 10, 2020, accessed June 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Johann Jakob Josef ("Hanns") and Bettina Heinen. In: archive.nrw.de. September 3, 1937, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b Barbara & Detlef Rahlf: Bettina Heinen-Ayech - Vita I. In: bettina-heinen-ayech.de. October 10, 2008, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  4. ^ A b Barbara & Detlef Rahlf, Munich: Bettina Heinen-Ayech. In: bettina-heinen-ayech.de. October 10, 2008, accessed November 3, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b Art has to open new windows. In: solinger-tageblatt.de. September 3, 1937, accessed November 9, 2018 .
  6. ^ Announcements from the Erwin Bowien e. V. December 2010
  7. ↑ a b c Barbara & Detlef Rahlf: Bettina Heinen-Ayech - Vita II. In: bettina-heinen-ayech.de. October 10, 2008, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Barbara & Detlef Rahlf: Bettina Heinen-Ayech - Vita III. In: bettina-heinen-ayech.de. October 10, 2008, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  9. Jump up ↑ Diana Millies: "Do not degrade nature into a motive". The cosmogony of the painter Bettina Heinen-Ayech . In: Malika Bouabdellah / Diana Millies / Bernard Zimmermann (eds.): Bettina Heinen-Ayech retrospective 1951–1992 . Stadtsparkasse Solingen, Solingen 1992, p. 4 .
  10. ↑ Farida Hamadou: Bettina Heinen-Ayech, 50ans à Guelma: l'amour, l'Algérie… In: mtissage.wordpress.com. February 4, 2013, accessed November 6, 2018 (French).
  11. ↑ Solingen: Thieved art. In: Rp Online. October 2, 2006, accessed November 11, 2018 .
  12. ^ Algeria as a source of inspiration for the painter Bettina Heinen-Ayech. In: Maghreb magazine. December 28, 2017, accessed November 3, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Bouabdellah, "Bettina", book cover.
  14. ↑ الرئيسي: بتينا .. فنانة ألمانية انصهر &. In: albayan.ae. October 10, 2014, accessed November 15, 2018 (Arabic).
  15. ↑ Johannes Rauenker: Bavarian Radio making a film in Kreuzthal. In: schwaebische.de. October 11, 2012, accessed November 3, 2018 .
  16. ↑ a b Bettina-Heinen-Ayech exposera à Dar El Kenz. Femme-lumière, femme-courage. In: dzairnews.com. May 17, 2011, accessed November 3, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Flowers and Landscapes in the Light of Algeria. In: Bonner General-Anzeiger. January 15, 2016, accessed November 3, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Quoted from: Ali Elhadj-Tahar / Hans Karl Pesch: Bettina Heinen-Ayech . U-Form Verlag, Solingen 1982, p. 38 .
personal data
SURNAME Heinen-Ayech, Bettina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heinen, Bettina (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Solingen
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 2020
Place of death Munich