Bettina Heinen-Ayech (3 September 1937 – 7 June 2020) was a German painter. She became known for her colorful landscape views of Algeria.
Between 1955 and 2017 she had many exhibitions worldwide and won several prizes.
Heinen-Ayech died on 7 June 2020.
Biography
Bettina Heinen was the daughter of the in Bauchem, Germany born journalist Johann Jakob Josef "Hanns" Heinen (1895-1961). For many years he was editor-in-chief of the Solinger Tageblatt and the industry newspaper Eberswalder Offertenblatt. He was also active as a lyricist and playwright.[2] Her mother Erna Steinhoff-Heinen (1898-1969), was born in Düsseldorf and came from a westphalian family from the Soest area. [3] Bettina Heinen had three siblings, two brothers and a sister; the children grew up in a Solingen, Germany home characterized by art and openness.[4] The family lived in an old half-timbered house in the district of Höhscheid, former pit for a lead mine there, which Heinen continued to live in during stays in her hometown until her old age.[5][6]
During the World War II, Bettina Heinen lived with her mother and sister in Kreuzthal-Eisenbach near Isny in Allgäu from 1942, later joined by the painter and family friend Erwin Bowien (1899-1972), who had returned to Germany in 1942 after a ten-year stay in the Netherlands and was on constant flight from Nazi authorities. Her father Hanns Heinen followed in 1944, after publishing an article on the real state of Germany. Warrants for him and Bowien arrest arrived in Kreuzthal, which "tore the postmistress apart," as Heinen later said.[7]
From 1948 to 1954, Bettina went to Solingen's August Dicke Girls' High School, where a teacher recognized and encouraged her talent. She received her first artistic training from Bowien, who remained her mentor until his death.[3] From 1954 she visited the Cologne Werkschulen and there Otto Gerster's class for monumental mural painting, during which she was given three preliminary classes.[8] In 1955 works by Bettina Heinen - 20 watercolors and drawings - were exhibited for the first time in the Kursaal in Bad Homburg. Paintings by the then 18-year-old Bettina Heinen were included by the Frankfurt gallery owner Hanna Bekker vom Rath in the group exhibition Deutsche Kunst der Gegenwart (1955/56), in which they were shown alongside artworks by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Käthe Kollwitz on a tour to South America, Africa, and Asia. Schmidt-Rottluff advised her, "Bettina, stay true to yourself!"[4]
This was followed by studies with Hermann Kaspar at the Munich Art Academy and journey to Ticino in Switzerland. From 1958 Bettina studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen and made the first of several trips to Norway, where she bought a hut at the foot of the Seven Sisters.[8] In 1959 and 1962 Bettina Heinen received grants from the Ministry of Culture of Nordrhein-Westfalen. This was followed by painting stays on Sylt, in Ticino and Norway, as well as in Paris. In 1962 Bettina Heinen made her first trip to North Africa, when she was invited to Cairo by the German Cultural Institute.[8] She was also invited to the German Cultural Institute in Cairo.
In Paris, Bettina met her future husband, the Algerian Abdelhamid Ayech (1926-2010), at the Jardin du Luxembourg in 1960, when she was there painting with Bowien. Two years after the birth of daughter Diana in 1961, the family moved to Guelma, Ayech's hometown in Algeria, which had since become independent from France. Her Son Haroun was born in 1969. [9] In the decades that followed, Bettina Heinen-Ayech switched between Solingen and Algeria, where she became a familiar sight in search of subjects in her car, "a vehicle that was once a R4," with "the inevitable cigarette holder in the corner of her mouth."[10] Her love for Algeria was also based on her love for her husband Hamid, a "free and courageous man," according to Heinen.[11]