More than portraits, Katinka Lampe paints faces, those of children or adolescents: faces without a story, beings of paint emerging from large, colorful backgrounds. Shown in three-quarter view, full face, or bust, with gazes direct or hidden behind their hair, the faces are intriguing and seek to engage in dialogue with the viewer. Each of them, in its own way, expresses the same restless desire: to become someone else.
— Léa Bismuth
Katinka Lampe, born in 1963 in the Netherlands, is a painter renowned for her figurative and expressionist works.
Through her paintings, she explores themes related to identity, social relationships, and gender. While the features of her subjects remain identifiable, they do not constitute the main focus: the portrait becomes a pictorial concept rather than an individual representation. Lampe even prefers not to label her works as “portraits,” relegating personal characteristics to the background, while elaborate details alternate with flat surfaces and abstract backgrounds that refer only to themselves. She gives a particular role to her subjects, whom she depicts with false eyelashes, large jewelry, scarves, or veils—objects carrying social and cultural connotations that contrast with the youthful innocence and aesthetic of her subjects, creating a subtle tension within the image.
The tipping point between attraction and repulsion is always sought in her approach, and it is this oscillation, along with the way she blends modernity with the heritage of painting, that gives her works their depth and expressive power.
Her works have been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Sinebrychoff Art Museum in Helsinki in 2017 and the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands in 2024.