BASIC INFORMATION

Name: Henrica (Ria) Houwen 1947- 2025
Place of birth: Horst, the Netherlands
Discipline: Visual artist; painting in oils and acrylics, watercolor, and encaustic techniques

EDUCATION

1968–1973 — Academy for Visual Education, Tilburg, the Netherlands

BIOGRAPHY

Henrica (Ria) Houwen was a Dutch visual artist who spent most of her active artistic life in Curaçao. She was a visual art teacher at the Maria Immaculata Lyceum and Radulphus College for thirty years, until 2003. Through her work as an educator, curator, art critic, and artist, she played an active role in Curaçao’s cultural life.
for her work she drew lifelong inspiration from Curaçao, its people, the surrounding Caribbean Sea, tropical warmth, the human form, the colors of the sea, and the island’s expansive skies. Over time, her work evolved from impressionistic figuration toward greater abstraction, and the dreamlike atmosphere of her early work gave way to a more powerful visual language. She worked in oil, acrylic, watercolor, and encaustic painting, a technique in which pigments are mixed with heated beeswax and other materials.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Solo exhibitions

2000 — Gallery ’86, Curaçao
2003 — Miami Art Fair, Miami, USA
2003 — The World of Henrica Houwen, Curaçao
2008 — Curaçao in the Soul, Mon Art Gallery, Curaçao
2011 — Water, Mon Art Gallery, Curaçao
2014 — Water II, Mon Art Gallery, Curaçao
2017 — Water 3.0, Gallery Alma Blou, Curaçao
2023 — Goodby Ria Houwen, Gallery Alma Blou, Curaçao

Group exhibitions (selection)

2001 — Miami Art Fair, USA
2002 — 4th Biennale del Caribe, San Juan, Dominican Republic
2002 — Pandora’s Box, Gallery ’86, Curaçao
2003 — Where the Angels Dangle, Gallery ’86, Curaçao
2003 — Encaustic, Gallery ’86, Curaçao
2007 — Alegria, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
2008 — Synagogue, Curaçao
2009 — Cross Roads, Mon Art Gallery, Curaçao
2011 — Island Reflections, Michigan, USA

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Booklet: Ria Houwen, Curaçao in de ziel, 35 jaar schilderen