Margriet Windhausen was born in Roermond, Netherlands to painter Fons Windhausen and is the fourth generation of the Windhausen family to be an artist. She studied sculpture from 1962 to 1965 at the CityAcademy of Fine Arts in Maastricht. From 1965 to 1972 she was a teacher at Posterholt. She emigrated to New Zealand in 1976, where she made a name as a sculptor. For 25 years from 1990, she and her husband Paul van den Bergh lived in Timaru in two churches that they moved to the site and converted into a home and studio. In 2014 they moved to the Kapiti Coast. Windhausen and her husband have a number of children and grandchildren.
Works
In the early 1980s she made a number of bronze portraits. She then received a number of commissions for monumental works, such as a bronze statue of the New Zealand boxer Bob Fitzsimmons, which was commissioned by New Zealand property magnate and boxing fan Sir Robert Jones, and which is located in a public square in Timaru. Windhausen also made a two-metre high work of the sailing ships of Abel Tasman. This work was commissioned by the Netherlands-New Zealand Federation, and unveiled in Wellington on March 17, 1992 by Queen Beatrix. For the centenary of women's suffrage in New Zealand, she made the Kate Sheppard National Memorial, a bronze relief measuring five by over two metres. This work was unveiled on 19 September 1993. Windhausen's work also includes a statue of Captain Hamilton which was installed in Hamilton's Civic Square and then, in 2018, vandalised by activist Taitimu Maipi. Maipi used a hammer and red paint to damage the statue, and said that it did not make sense to celebrate a man who murdered the ancestors of local Māori. Windhausen said that "history is controversial and that's why I want to say I respect feelings for Captain Hamilton". Windhausen said her sculpture, to her, only went as far as illustrating where the name of the city came from. Other works include a sculpture of athlete Jack Lovelock for Timaru Boys' High School and The Face of Peace, installed at Caroline Bay.
