About

Dutch contemporary artist Ellen de Meijer creates portraits of modern-day archetypes that expose the contradictions and fragilities of contemporary life. Her subjects are not individuals but embodiments— figures that mirror the collective struggles, illusions, and performances of our age.

De Meijer’s archetypes inhabit the tension between aggressor and victim, authority and vulnerability. They are polished yet detached, composed yet unsettled — symbols of how social structures, power systems, and inherited conventions shape not only our present but the legacies we pass on to future generations. The recurring motif of gloves, for instance, reflects both complicity and distance: hands that remain clean, untouched, and yet deeply enmeshed in the mechanisms of influence.

Her practice traverses themes of status and power, material wealth, technology, climate change, competition, innocence, and resistance, grounding her work firmly within the cultural and political currents of the past decade. By framing portraits as reflections of collective truth and fabrication, de Meijer makes visible the emotional and ethical costs of consumerism, digital dependency, and global capitalism.

At once haunting and precise, her paintings invite us to confront what is hidden beneath the surfaces of modern identity: the fragile negotiations between authenticity and performance, intimacy and detachment, humanity and spectacle.

Ellen de Meijer (b. 1955, the Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. Her artistic journey began with an early fascination for “communication via image,” first explored through photography. Though she initially worked in commercial photography, de Meijer soon found its limitations too confining. She turned briefly to writing—studying Dutch literature and working as a copywriter—but found that words alone could not capture what she calls “the world of the seen and the unseen at the same time.”

At the age of 28, de Meijer committed herself fully to painting, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tilburg. With the technical rigor of the Dutch masters and an eagerness to experiment, she immersed herself in the medium, striving toward her vision of a complete image—at once material and psychological, surface and depth.

For two decades, de Meijer also guided others in their artistic development through her self-founded art school in Bussum, where she mentored hundreds of students while steadily pursuing her own practice.

In 2008, she closed her school to dedicate herself entirely to her painting. Since then, her incisive portraits of modern archetypes have gained increasing international attention, establishing her as a mature female voice within contemporary portraiture. Her work has been exhibited at major international fairs including Art Miami, Art Stage Singapore, and Hong Kong Contemporary, and was selected for NADA Curated by the New Art Dealers Alliance in 2022. Her paintings are held in prominent private collections, including the VanDenBroek Foundation, one of the Netherlands’ top three collections.

Since 2014, de Meijer has been represented by UNIX Gallery in New York City, which introduced her work to a global stage and established her reputation among U.S. and Latin American collectors. Today, she continues to expand her presence in the international art market, positioning herself as one of the most distinctive late-career female artists working in contemporary portraiture.

2024

• Miami, fair, Art Miami, Unix Gallery

2022

• New York City, solo show, Lost and Found, Unix Gallery, New York, NY
• Selected for NADA Curated: Reduction to Satire (Reductio Ad Satura), an online exhibition by Fatos Ustek.
• Group exhibition, Cove Street Arts, Portland, Maine, USA

2019

• Aspen, auction, Art Crush
• Hong Kong, fair, Art Central
• New York City, solo show, #CO2, at UNIX Gallery
• New York City, group exhibition, Mad Summer, at UNIX Gallery

2018

• Delray Beach, museum group exhibition, Tech Effect, Cornell Art Museum
• New York City, group exhibition, at UNIX Gallery
• Palm Beach, fair, Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, UNIX Gallery

2017

• Selected for Artsy Featured Artist selection, August 2017
• Miami, fair - Art Miami, UNIX Gallery
• New York City, group exhibition - Mad Summer, at UNIX Gallery
• New York City, group exhibition - Future Anesthetics, at UNIX Gallery

2016

• Houston, solo show - Dissolution, UNIX Gallery
• New York City, group exhibition - You Can’t Always Get What You Want, UNIX Gallery
• Aspen, fair - Art Aspen, UNIX Gallery
• New York City, fair - Art New York, UNIX Gallery

2015

• New York City, solo show - Digital Divide, at UNIX Gallery
• New York City, group exhibition - Efflorescence, at UNIX Gallery
• New York City, fair - Art Miami, UNIX Gallery
• Singapore, fair - Art Stage Singapore, UNIX Gallery
• San Mateo, fair - Art Silicon Valley, UNIX Gallery
• Houston, fair - Texas Contemporary, UNIX Gallery
• Southampton, fair - Art Hamptons, UNIX Gallery
• New York City, fair - Art New York, UNIX Gallery, New York, NY

2014

• Miami, fair, Art Miami, UNIX Gallery,
• Ontario, fair, Art Toronto, UNIX Gallery
• Southampton, fair, Art Hamptons, UNIX Gallery
• Aspen, fair, Art Aspen, UNIX Gallery

1993 - 2010, select exhibitions

• Group show, Art Works, Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
• Solo show, Gallery Donkersloot, Aalsmeer (the Netherlands)
• Group show, Artes, Bussum (the Netherlands)
• Solo show, PaintBizz, Bussum (the Netherlands)
• Solo show, Gallery de Genieloods, Aalsmeer, (the Netherlands)
• Group exhibition, AIS, Beurs van Berlaghe, Amsterdam, (the Netherlands)