Born in The Netherlands, in 1946, Ria Houtkooper studied medicine at Utrecht University and practiced as a general physician. In 1974 she moved to Costa Rica with her family, and started taking sculpture classes with Mario Parra in San Jose in the 1980s, thus following her passion for the visual arts.
With her clean technique she purifies precious tropical woods, marble and stone. As an artist she seeks to uncover organic forms in an abstract manner, to open up spaces, and generate a three-dimensional union between matter and light. She strives to integrate lines, silhouettes and profiles of the human body, revealing their erotic essence as the work develops. As one critic put it: “Her synthesis of form and movement projects energy and force.” Or: “profoundly classic and abstract”, as a second opined. And as she herself once explained in an interview: “My idea is to provoke, to attract and to stir emotions. The esthetic concept I apply serves to compound that idea. I always try to leave observers space in their own vision and interpretation of my work. I don’t believe in better or worse, in rewarding or rejecting. I value the ideas and the efforts fellow-artists apply to their own discoveries. For me, sculpting equals permanence. I strongly feel I should leave a legacy. For an artist, working in durable materials is the closest approximation to immortality.”
Ria has participated in several collective and individual exhibitions and won de sculpture award of the BTC biennial in 1999. Her works are in private collections in Costa Rica, the Dutch Antilles, the United States, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia and Hong Kong.