Quick Facts
GeminiBiography
Hanneke Beaumont (born 1947 Maastricht, the Netherlands) is a Dutch-born sculptor.
She studied dentistry in the United States, but moved back to Europe, to Belgium, where she still lives today. Beaumont started her artistic studies in 1977 at the Académie de Braine l'Alleud, then at La Cambre and in Anderlecht; she received her first solo exhibition in 1983.
An important turn in her career happened in 1994 when she was awarded, for her terracotta sculpture group "Le Courage", the major award of the Centre International d'Art Contemporain, Château Beychevelle.Shortly after, she participated in the second Exposiciòn Internacional de Esculturas en la Calle, organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where her work was permanently installed.Since 2005, various museums have held retrospectives of Beaumont’s art, among which the Beelden aan Zee museum in the Hague, the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Gardens (Grand Rapids, Michigan), the Artis Naples / The Baker Museum (Florida)… In Brussels, she is instantly recognized for her monumental installations, namely «Stepping Forward» installed in front of the EU Council, «Le Courage» at the entrance of the Erasmus hospital, «Le Départ» at Brussels airport or «Interaction & Self-Protection» in Ganshoren. Present in numerous public and private collections, Hanneke Beaumont enjoys an international reputation and her art is exhibited worldwide. Many other public and private collectors have manifested great interest in her work.She now enjoys an international reputation with exhibitions in the US, UK, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Switzerland.She shows at the Contessa Gallery.
Hanneke Beaumont has said that she is “very much a clay person”, a persuasion apparent in the bold way the sculptor carves her forms (such as “Terracotta 78 & 82”), leaving their surfaces rough and unrefined. Neither man nor woman, Beaumont’s sculptures represent ‘Man’ in the broader sense, she addresses grand issues of the human condition. Many of Beaumont’s figures appear neither male nor female, neither young nor old. They do not appear as portraits of particular individuals, nor are they modeled after idealized human forms. Physically, they are approximations of human beings, and as such, they provide a way to consider, from a distance, general ideas about the nature of the human race.
The artist shares her work time between Pietrasanta, (Italy) and Middelburg (Netherlands), where in early 2015 she acquired a XVII’th century warehouse as studio. Beaumont's sculptures are realized in Terracotta, Bronze and Cast iron.