Dutch painter, poet, writer and essayist.
Her father was the art historian Barend Henricus Maria Mutsaers (30 November 1906, Tilburg – 10 March 1980). Her mother was Mies Lely (8 August 1917 – 2 April 1977). Her mother was a granddaughter of the brilliant engineer and politician Cornelis Lely (23 September 1854 7 PM, Den Haag – 22 January 1929), who remodelled the shape of the Netherlands from 1928-1932 with the Afsluitdijk (Closure Dike). Her brother was Barend Henricus Maria Mutsaers (9 April 1950- 29 December 2001, Utrecht). Her grandfather was Bernardus Henricus Maria Mutsaers (11 September 1872, Tilburg – 20 January 1951, Antwerp).
As a young child she was rather weird and fell in love with the simple form of a cucumber. Her father made a smiley face in it, and she took the fruit with her in bed, like a teddy-bear. But after a while the fruit started to rot, she wrote on her website. But nevertheless , she kept that innocence of a child.
In the remarkable book “Women’s Writing from the Low Countries 1880-2010: An Anthology”, Bart Vervaeck describes her as a double talent in reverse. She was a double talent as being being both a painter and a poet and writer like Lucebert. The reverse talent hinted to her weird capability to both paint and speak/write in the mirror image. It is now known that Leonardo da Vinci wrote most of his personal notes in mirror, only using standard writing, if he intended his texts to be read by others. Charlotte learned herself this art, as she told to the writer Adriaan van Dis, in a now historical television interview.
Bart Vervaeck starts her biography with a citate: “”Of everything they tried to teach to you/ The opposite’s every bit as true.” This text appears in mirror writing under a drawing in “Het circus van de geest” (The Circus of the Mind), the collection of emblems with which writer and painter Charlotte Mutsaers made her literary début. The drawing shows a man pulling a cart. In the cart sits a horse using the whip. According to the popular saying you mustn’t put the cart before the horse; what happens here is much worse. But Mutsaers couldn’t care less about conventional common sense, and besides, she has a weakness for horses, dogs and other animals. Her emblem shows the reversal of our clichéd understanding and goes in search of a symbolic form of comprehension, that is, a wisdom that is shown rather than explained. A wisdom that is also concrete and tangible instead of abstract.”
Like a doubting Thomas, she searched for evidence of the transpersonal sides in her life. She laughed about herself and seeing mankind in to the mirror (Animal Farm). She became a prominent member of the rather unique Dutch Party for the animals.
She was granted in 1992 the Jan Greshoffprijs for “Kersebloed”, in 2000 the both he the Constantijn Huygensprijs and Jacobus van Looyprijs for all of her work, in 2000 the Busken Huet Prize for “Zeepijn” and in 2010 the prestigious P.C. Hooft Prize.
In 2010 a short documentary of her appeared; De wereld van Charlotte Mutsaers: “Writer, illustrator and painter Charlotte Mutsaers is as original, contrary and colourful as her work. She has created a miraculous world inhabited by rabbits, dogs and cucumbers. The frequently laurelled artist taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy for many years, before taking up a writing career. She and her partner Jan Fontijn and her fox terrier divide their time between Amsterdam, Oostende and France. She comments: “Since you can’t prolong life, I think I wanted to broaden it. In fact, we live three lives at the same time now.” Illustrated by several old TV interviews – for example with Adriaan van Dis, when she proved she could sing in reverse – Charlotte Mutsaers tells about her childhood and the present. As it turns out, animals have always played a key role in her life, as is clear from her colourful paintings and baroque books, and she fights adamantly against animal abuse. Despite this seriousness, she always has people laughing. ”
Personal
She is married to the man of letters Jan Fontijn (9 February 1936, Amsterdam), the biographer of the in fairy-tales believing psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden. They got no children. They live in Amsterdam, Oostende and France.

Link to Wikipedia