Bio

Naqiba Bergefurt (1954) is autodidact. As a child she was attracted to the visual arts as well as to music and theater. After High school she studied Pedagogy and Art Therapy in Utrecht. She did several courses and trainings in intuitive drawing and painting and had private singing lessons, which led to solo’s in concerts. For a long time she worked as a teacher and art-therapist with children and adults. Since 2010 painting is her main profession. Moreover, she works as a singer.

She started exhibiting her work in 1986. Till 2016 she had many solo-exhibitions in Amsterdam and since 2011 she took part in international group exhibitions, throughout Italy, the US (New York), Portugal, Canada and the Netherlands. Naqiba lives and works in Amsterdam since 1984.

Statement

"When I find myself before the white canvas, I am in the nothingness, I am free. Streams in colors or forms like to be shown, as I feel. Exiting! This reminds me of the origin of life.

Step by step a dialogue develops. Inner space shows itself as boundless, always full of diversity. New impulses come continually to me and I have to choose which ones to follow and how to express them in color and form. Not from the mind but from the movements, my hands connect with my soul and make their choices intuitively.

Who I am, comes to live, communicates with what’s on the canvas, gives expression and receives again. Goes inside to receive more wonder. I am alive!"

What happens there on the surface, is a statement but also a question: How do we go on?

Looking for connections and smoothness or searching for power and contrasts?

These questions are without words or comments. They are a feeling, wondering.

Very often only later on I get to know what the painting is about.

Just by letting myself be guided by the stream I go forward. Of course: my material is fluid so I connect with the fluid part in me and I want to delay the moment of conservation as long as possible.

When recognizable forms appear, should I obey them? Maybe the mind wants to give meaning and says: “’Yes”’. But what says the painting? Is this true for this moment or are these things already told too many times? Often, when it feels good just to try out, something like a body, plant or mineral, comes to existence, but always as part of the whole, part of the landscape, part of the earth.

Influences and Inspirations

My work doesn’t fit in conventional themes or styles. Certainly there are influences and inspirations from holistic art-philosophies like the view on colors of Rudolf Steiner and the drawing view of Michiel Dhont, which is related to Johannes Itten. Furthermore I feel close to the expressionism and spiritual art view of Kandinsky. Also the so-called Eco-philosophy, where one views everything on earth as connected and interdependent is important to me. But my view goes even further, because I see every aspect of life as inspired and full of meaning. So nature is my most important inspiration, next to music.

In many of my works the theme of Climate change plays a role. It’s the experience of the elements itself with this global event that is given form in these pictures.

What others say about Naqiba’s art

Salvatore Russo, editor in chief Effetto Arte, Italy:

(Contemporary Art international magazine, nov/dec 2016)

When you need to look at something different, you need to have a look at Naqiba’s artworks: strong brushstrokes, colors and spatula and a general passionate spirit, constitute the bases from which the art of this painter comes out. A style exercise that through the pictorial gesture of Naqiba, talks about nature, life and philosophy, as some of the titles suggest.

Color match is perfect and helps the composition to find its perfect harmony, using the pictorial elements of the artist.

A very talented painter gifted of a deep sensitivity that allows her to observe things that go beyond the surface and learning how to find their real and pure beauty, their meanings.

Ruthy Tucker, executive director/curator Amsterdam Whitney Gallery, New York:

(Catalogue Amsterdam Whitney Exhibition nov/dec 2012)

Ms Bergefurt explains her art as a visual metaphor, inspired by her inner psyche, stating:

"While painting I find myself in communication with the unconsciousness. Step by step a dialogue develops. Inner space shows itself as both boundless and full of diversity."

The gracious application of densely rich oil paint builds structural layers atop the flat canvas, exciting viewers with luminescent forms, mesmerizingly soaring through the backgrounds plane. Her spectral palette ranges from deep cool hues to fiery warm highlights and together with her multifaceted brushwork ranging from long sweeping streams to rapid thin strokes she creates a momentous canvas, bursting with active energy. Ms Bergefurt translates passion into graceful canvases through animated colors and kinetic brushstrokes, exuding sensual charm and motivating beauty.

Joost Schmidt, Professor at the Rietveld Academy Amsterdam and art historian:

(Catalogue On the Edge, Trevisan International Art exhibition 2011)

Power lies in the colors, this is the motto of the Dutch artist, Naqiba Bergefurt. Her way of using pure, almost unmixed colors gives monumentality to her art works, so that the image seems to be stepping out of the frame of the painting. Then the shape of the image becomes subordinate to the expressiveness of the colors. Softness is translated into lyrical color. Hardness of yellows, reds and blues unites harmony and roughness in pure expression of colors. Viewers of Bergefurt’s work will be strongly drawn into her spiritual world as if the soul is in a process of reincarnation.