Moniek Toebosch

Monique Pauline Maria Josephine Toebosch, also known by the pseudonym Paul Rubens, (19 August 1948 – 24 November 2012) was a Dutch actress, artist and musician. She began her performing career in 1969 and produced improvised music. Toebosch collaborated with Michel Waisvisz in multiple theatre productions and did solo productions before moving into the visual arts scene as an installation artist. She was a lecturer at the audiovisual department of Amsterdam's Gerrit Rietveld Academie; at ArtEZ University of Arts during the 1996–97 academic year; at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten from 1996 to 2000 and was director of the post-academic course DasArts (later the Master of Theatre of the Amsterdam University of the Arts from 2004 to 2007. She was a recipient of the Sandberg Prize and the Arti Medal of Arti et Amicitiae.

Early life On 19 August 1948, Toebosch was born in Breda, the fourth of six children of the Dutch composer and organist and the Flemish woman Maria Adolphina Anna Rubens. She was raised in Breda and had failed to gain admittance to a drama school when she was 16 years old.

Career While at AKV St. Joost, Toebsoch performed French music in cafés and concert halls. She produced improvised music such as with the Werkgroep voor Vanzelfsprekendheid in 1969 and The New Electric Chamber Music Ensemble. She collaborated with Michel Waisvisz from 1972 in theatre productions such as Kerstspel in 1972, Avond over Jazz in 1976, Michel de Kerstnacht door in 1977 and De M&M en M&M Show in 1979. Toebosch and Kees Klaver produced the solo theatre cinematic adaptive production of Ike Bertels broadcast on VPRO's NPO 2 channel in June 1979 in which she was the lead role.

Not long after, she began her visual arts career. She reached a wider audience with the installation of the Painthouse, a 'composition of wood, linen, paint and mezzo-soprano', firstly presented at the Royal Theater Carré and broadcast by the VPRO on television, then shown at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam the following year. Toebosch played a prostitute in the 1982 Orlow Seunke film . During one performance, she persuaded some musicians to continue performing after the conductor Iván Fischer forced the NOS Omroeporkest to stop playing, thinking the audience was not taking the music of Richard Wagner's Prelude seriously. She was a guest lecturer at ArtEZ University of Arts during the 1996–97 academic year and was an educator at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten from 1996 to 2000.

She took on the male alter ego Paul Rubens in 2010, which she based on her mother's maiden name after a diagnosis of lung cancer and performed in the character on occasion. Author Thomas Dresscher wrote that she "was a versatile artist who liked to experiment and has guided and inspired many young artists. Art critics and historians find it difficult to name or categorize her diverse and eclectic work. It is in almost all cases groundbreaking and confrontational."

She received the Sandberg Prize in 1995, the in 2000 and the Arti Medal of Arti et Amicitiae in 2009.