Face cut from Anne Frank mural in Amersfoort; artist calls for answers
A mural of Anne Frank in Amersfoort was deliberately defaced this week, with her face carefully removed from the painting. The mural, located on a sound barrier along the A28 highway near the Nimmerdor city forest, had recently been restored by the municipality. Prior to the vandalism, it had stood undisturbed for 16 years, NOS and RTV Utrecht report.
The artist, Bas van Oudheusden, says the damage was intentional. “It’s not like it was destroyed by a bunch of kids passing by,” he told RTV Utrecht. “It was done quite neatly. It feels like there’s a message behind it.”
Van Oudheusden created the mural at age 18 under the graffiti name “Repelsteeltje” after reading The Diary of Anne Frank. He pasted a well-known portrait of Anne Frank onto the wall, then spray-painted her face. The mural gained broad support locally, and even the city council declared it was not vandalism but art. It became one of the few illegal graffiti pieces in the Netherlands officially allowed to remain in place.
The work was restored by the city last year as part of a cleanup project, but now, with the mural damaged, van Oudheusden is unsure whether to repair it. “Maybe I can do something creative with it,” he said. “But I also want to know: why? What message was behind this? I’d like to talk to the person who did it.”
Van Oudheusden revealed his identity in 2022 when Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch infrastructure agency, announced plans to relocate the wall due to highway expansion. The mural had become a cultural landmark in Amersfoort and was expected to be preserved in a new location.
