Mayor Harm Geert Buiter (1971-1985)

About this artwork.

Harm Geert Buiter (1922 – 2011) became a member of the SDAP at the age of eighteen and thus automatically became a member of the PvdA. In the last year of the Second World War, he led a resistance group in Almelo that was mainly involved in helping people in hiding and Jews. After the war he worked for many years in the trade union movement. In Brussels, Buiter became secretary-general of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in 1967. He then came to Groningen and succeeded Jan Berger, who had resigned as mayor of Groningen in 1971, and in the period up to 1985 he led a college of mayor and aldermen with passionate left-wing colleagues such as Jacques Wallage, Max van den Berg and Lammert Westerhoff. He loves to work with his 'boys' and turns down an offer to become mayor of Rotterdam. Buiter does not always agree with the ideas of his aldermen, but outwardly he always shows solidarity. Among other things, he was busy bringing in government services. All in all, his efforts provided the city with several thousand jobs. He became a well-appreciated mayor.

In 2012, it was decided to give the station square in the Europapark, which also houses a large office building of the municipality in 2014, the name Harm Buiterplein.

The mayor's portrait was painted in 1991 by Matthijs Röling (born 1943), a painter who is considered to be one of the greatest figurative painters in the Netherlands. Mayor Buiter smoked a pipe; Röling therefore hid the pipe in the mayor's portrait.

In 1972 Röling became a teacher at the Minerva Academy in Groningen. Together with Wout Muller, he stood at the cradle of Northern realism in Groningen. For example, in 1987 he and Muller made the mural The Tree of Knowledge in the auditorium of the Academy Building of the University of Groningen.

Facts & Figures.

• Artist(s)
  Matthijs Röling

• Year of creation
  1991

• Dimensions (in cm)
  99x99

• Collection
  Town Hall Collection

• Technic
  Oil paint on canvas