Bettie Cilliers-Barnard

Who was Bettie Cilliers-Barnard?

Bettie Cillers-Barnard was a South African abstract artist, generally known for her large canvases of birds in flight. She was also the mother of well-known South African actress Jana Cilliers.

Cilliers-Barnarnd was born in Rustenburg, Transvaal on 18 November 1914. She started painting in the late 1930s and over the years kept experimenting with colour, lines, abstraction and figurative abstractions. In the 1970s, birds unexpectedly started appearing in her work – which could be described as part of her earthly symbolism. She referred to this work as her "flights of the spirit". Since 1946 Dr Ciliers-Barnard’s works have been shown in seventy solo exhibitions in South Africa as well as in Paris, London, and at the Prestiges Invitation Exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts museum in Taiwan.

Her South African graphic art exhibitions abroad have included Austria, Germany, Spain, Greece and Israel to name a few. Her tapestries, paintings, and murals in oils have been commissioned both for public collections and for museum- and private collections in South Africa and abroad. Most recently in 1992 she painted "Vision" for the Pretoria Eye Institute and some of her other commissions including the painting "Flight" for South African Airways, 1983, the tapestry "Guardian Angel of the Arts" for t he State Theatre of Pretoria, 1981, and her mural in oils "Mensa sana corpore sano" for the Department of Health in Pretoria, 1980.