Michel van Overbeeke - Ets. Titel, "House Cat". Uit 1987 Ingelijst - Sold

Michel van Overbeeke (The Hague, 1942) Van Overbeeke grows up in a family that drags on in dire poverty. His youth is therefore not easy to call carefree and happy. His parents divorced in the period Michel was born and his father will remarry three times. He will not meet his mother until he is fourteen. Six years after his birth, the family (with stepmother Popje) ends up in the center of Haarlem, where his father rents out a room in the attic as extra income to a drawing club for amateurs: 'De Vrije Kunstkring'. This forms the basis for Michel's further career as an artist. When he is caught by his father peeking at the nude model of the Kunstkring, his father punishes him by making him compulsory to participate in the drawing meetings. With club member Otto van der Peet as a source of inspiration, the seed for his artistry sown! After an unsuccessful period at the Haarlem Lyceum, he manages to get his father's permission to study at the Graphic School Amsterdam. He passes the entrance exam 'Cum-Laude' and feels like a fish in water. Even though it is not an Academy but more of a school education. Later he will say that he is glad that he did not end up at the Academy. Now he has more quickly been given the opportunity to put his own face in his visual art. With its own form language that developed parallel to his spiritual experiences. At the age of nineteen, Van Overbeeke graduated as the best student of his year, seven months after the death of his father and in the year that his son Manuel was born. The first years are tough and the young family of Overbeeke keeps itself alive with jobs and donations. Through the intercession of the then director of modern art of the Frans Halsmuseum, he entered the Visual Arts Regulation (BKR) at the age of 23 and from then on he was free to focus on being an artist. After three years he can say goodbye to the BKR. He completely sells out an exhibition in Amsterdam, earning him five thousand guilders. A formidable amount for 1969! The future smiles at him! A successful period begins for van Overbeeke. The work sells very well and his wife Christhilde takes care of the business side of the artistry. This means that the two are constantly together, and that starts to wring. After fifteen years of marriage, they separate. Michel goes to India and there immerses himself in philosophy, yoga culture and religion. He has always incorporated religious symbols in his art and will not let go of that. All religions are given a place in his work in their own way. In addition, eroticism also plays an important role. Not to provoke, but to let his feelings be recognized. In his work, the symbols of women, eroticism and religion compete for their own place in his world of expression. Van Overbeeke: `Eroticism remains something difficult in the public opinion. Inside everyone has everything with it, but outside no one should notice anything. It's important to me." Recognition has come and his work is also shown internationally at exhibitions and expositions all over the world: Brussels, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Paris, Buffalo, Luxembourg, Ljubljana... In recent years, van Overbeeke has also further developed his artistry and is become more and more (successfully) involved in glass art.