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As a dedicated plein air artist, he travelled tirelessly throughout the region between Amsterdam and Hoorn, producing hundreds of paintings and drawings. After the occupation of the Netherlands by the German army in 1940, he was forced into hiding. This was the beginning of a very difficult period for the painter, during which he was banned from exhibiting by the Reich Chamber of Culture and his paintings were confiscated by the Gestapo.

Bowien was not only one of the many German exiles who found refuge in Holland, but also one of the last painters of the Egmond Artists‘ Colony. He captured the breathtakingly beautiful dune landscape around Egmond aan Zee, the wide horizons   of North Holland and the often stormy North Sea in many powerful paintings.

The exhibition opens on 26 April and will run until 2 November 2025.

Peter van den Berg published a beautiful book that gives a good impression of why the fishing village of Egmond near Alkmaar was an important artists‘ colony for decades. Peter van den Berg dedicated part of the book to the painter Erwin Bowien, who made this Artists‘ Colony famous between 1933 and 1940 (Peter J. H. Van den Berg, De schilders van Egmond, W. Books, Zwolle, 2021, ISBN 9789462583931).

More at

www.museumvanegmond.nl
erwin-bowien.com
bettina-heinen-ayech-foundation.com

Museum van Egmont
Zuiderstraat 7
Egmond aan Zee
Netherlands
www.museumvanegmond.nl

sponsored by the Bettina Heinen-Ayech Foundation

Opening hours
daily: 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.