G.F. Händel & Marc de Klijn

Marc de Klijn makes Messiah I and IV during a concert of Händel's Messiah by the Margaretha Consort from Norg, the Netherlands, in December 2016.

 

 

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Marc de Klijn: Messiah I, 2016, acrylics on canvas, 130 x 130 cm.

Marc de Klijn: Messiah IV, 2016, acrylics on canvas, 130 x 130 cm.

Marc de Klijn was born in 1939 in the Netherlands. His parents were musical Jews. As a child Marc survived the war by living in hiding. Even though he grew up in a Jewish family, there was no room at home for the Jewish faith or religion in general. Estranged from his Jewish roots he discovered the Bible through L'Abri and came to faith in 1970. As a graphic designer he worked for several publishers. Among others he designed the book Weerklank by Anne Frank. After further education in drawing and painting he started teaching in 1979 at the Art School (Kunstacademie CABK) in Kampen. At first he painted mainly realistic and stylized landscapes. After 1990 he started to paint larger abstract canvases, while his subjects changed to spritual themes. Together with his wife, the ceramist Henny van Hartingsveldt, he visited the former destruction camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1995. It was a shattering experience for him, which confronted him with his Jewish roots. This resulted in a series of works about the holocaust. Marc de Klijn and his wife emigrated to Israel in 2013 and now live close to Jerusalem. They have become members of a Messianic congregation.

For more about their work, see http://www.artmahe.com.

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