Ode to Nola Hatterman | At home in colour

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

Dear Nola,

To my shame, I had no idea who you were. Until in the middle of corona period, on a dark December day, I stood in a warm and colourful Stedelijk Museum among your works and those of your students.

You were born in Amsterdam as Nola Henderika Petronella Hatterman on 12 August 1899. You lived as a child at Middenweg 127 opposite Frankendael House. Your father was a bookkeeper at the Indian trading firm Mirandolle, Voûte & Co, an import and export company of colonial trade goods. 

Your heart went out to the children of colour from the Dutch East Indies, who were on leave in the Netherlands or studying here. You found them sympathetic and wonderful, those who were called ‘Indos’. You made friendships with them. From that connection, you experienced how condescendingly they were treated by white Western society. The injustice of this affected you painfully. Attention to the emancipation of people of colour would be the thread running through your life.

You also became friends with Surinamese people who came to Amsterdam looking for work. They posed for you to earn extra money and you enjoyed painting their portraits. With your choice of Surinamese models, you criticised existing white conceptions of beauty and rebelled against the colonial ideas of your youth. Your painting ‘On the terrace’ (1930) portrays Lou Drenthe, trumpeter and waiter. You portrayed him as a well-dressed, confident man of colour.

Through your new lover, the artist Arie Jansma, you were in communist circles in the 1930s and 1940s. This is probably how you came into contact with the Union of Surinamese Workers. You drew illustrations for the Federal Bulletin of this trade union.

In years after World War II, your house on Falckstraat became an important meeting place for Surinamese students. Yet you left Amsterdam for Paramaribo for good in 1953. You could not connect with the post-war abstract art movements. 

Your realistic painting style was positively received in Suriname. After an exhibition of your work, you were asked to teach drawing courses at the Cultural Centre Suriname. These courses would form the basis of The School for Visual Arts, which was founded in 1960. You became its director. 

You felt Suriname should develop its own national art without influences from Western art movements. In the 1970s, your vision and function were questioned from the young independence movement. How did a white Dutch woman determine what Surinamese art was?  And why was a white woman the head of a Surinamese art academy?  Deeply disappointed, you stepped down in 1971. The new generation did not apply to The New School for the visual arts you founded.  Even so, you were at the cradle of a generation of Surinamese-Dutch artists.

A car accident ended your life while you were on your way to an exhibition. You are buried in Paramaribo, far from Amsterdam. ‘The Surinamese soil will absorb me,’ you wrote in your poem ‘Wan De’.

What a life Nola! A white girl raised in the Watergraafsmeer, who became the director of an art academy* in Paramaribo via theatre, film and easel. And all in a time when women were allowed to be seen, but not especially not heard.

* The 'Nola Hatterman Instituut voor kunstonderwijs’ in Paramaribo, founded by former students, proudly bears its name. The institute was renamed as the Nola Hatterman Art Academy (NHAA) in 2012.

Sources

From December 2020 to spring 2021, the Stedelijk organised the exhibition ‘The Surinamese School’ around works by Nola Hatterman and her students. Due to corona restrictions, the exhibition was only accessible for a short time. The Stedelijk preserves the ‘The Surinamese School’ exhibition in an online archive.  You can view and read about it on the museum's website: www.stedelijk.nl

www.nolahatterman.com

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nola_Hatterman

https://oost-online.nl/suriname-in-haar-hart/

‘Nola – portret van een eigenzinnig kunstenares’, Ellen de Vries ISBN 978 90 806773 6 4