Helen Verhoeven

Helen Verhoeven (1974, Leiden, Netherlands), a Dutch/American artist, lives and works in Berlin. Verhoeven makes paintings which are sometimes accompanied by ceramic work, stained-glass windows, printmaking, film, or installation. Her work ranges from very small to monumentally large and from simple and iconic to crowded and chaotic. She appropriates and inverts the traditions of state portraiture, religious and mythological painting, the muse, the nude, the fantastical, and the mundane. Within a kind of trans-historic space, her paintings depict rapture, despair, indifference, lust, aggression, and estrangement. Her work concentrates on the human experience: the turmoil of the individual and the hysteria of the group. Sometimes finely rendered, other times crude, she works across a range of scale and register.

In 2015, Verhoeven was commissioned to make a new work for the Supreme Court building in The Hague: a 4 x 6 meter canvas depicting a densely populated courtroom full of judicial and art-historical references.

She grew up in the Netherlands and moved to the United States in 1986, receiving her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995 and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2001, where she studied under Eric Fischl. In 2005 and 2006 she attended the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Since 2021 she has served as an advisor at the Rijksakademie, and since April 2023 she has been a professor of painting at Dresden University of Fine Arts.

Solo exhibitions include Because, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2025); Dannenwalde Kirche, Gransee, Brandenburg (2025); 104 Galerie, Tokyo (2025); Humans, Gregor Podnar, Vienna (2023); Puff Puff Goodbye, Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2021); Oh God, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2018); Statements, Art Basel, Basel (2018); Libby Libby Libby, Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2016); The Waiting, Parisa Kind, Frankfurt (2013); Mother, Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2013); Stage Disasters, Wallspace, New York (2012); and Part Pretty, Schunck, Heerlen (2012).

Group exhibitions include Stairway to..?, Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2026); Good Mom / Bad Mom, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2025); Ghost Image, Gallery Judin, Berlin (2024); Schilderkunst Nu, Singer Laren Museum, Laren (2023); Kiss My Soul, Dordrecht Museum, Dordrecht (2023); Our Beginnings Never Know.., Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami (2021); Body Language, Saatchi Gallery, London (2013); Made in Germany Zwei, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2012); and Bellevue, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2011).

Her work is held in public collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Utrecht Centraal Museum; Nationaal Museum Paleis het Loo, Apeldoorn; Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht; Stadtmuseum Berlin; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. Awards include the Dutch Royal Painting Prize (2008), the Wolvecampprijs (2010), and the ABN-AMRO Art Prize (2019).