Charlotte Dorothée Baroness van Pallandt (Arnhem 1898 – 1997 Noordwijk) was a Dutch painter and one of the most important Dutch sculptors. Charlotte van Pallandt grew up in Schaarsbergen, where she lived on the Vrijland estate with her parents, sisters and brother, where she grew up very protected and received private lessons from a local teacher.

Even in her youth, Van Pallandt proved to be very gifted. She preferred drawing, painting and playing the piano. It was not uncommon for women of her background to be involved in the visual arts, as long as they were practiced as a leisure activity and not as a profession. Charlotte van Pallandt received her first drawing lessons in 1918 from the Hague painter Albert Roelofs.

The marriage to the diplomat Adolph Count vanrechteren, with whom she lived in Bern, ended in 1923 after four years. The Baroness went her own way and traveled to Paris; art was her purpose in life. In Paris in 1926 she worked at the Académie of cubist painter André Lhote. However, Charlotte van Pallandt decided to stop taking lessons after a year, because she was afraid of coming under too much of her master's influence, and decided to focus on sculpture. Van Pallandt trained in Paris, where she was taught by Charles Despiau and Charles Malfray. Unlike Lhote, Malfray gave his students freedom to develop their own style principles. In 1937, Van Pallandt exhibited a portrait of her nephew Serge in the Dutch pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, for which she won second prize.

In 1939, Charlotte returned to the Netherlands and eventually settled in Amsterdam in 1941. She had to catch up and was working very hard and she knew one thing for sure. Women who saw art, and sculpture in particular, as a life purpose stood out in the art world. With her self-chosen name Mussavira, which means 'divine art', she became a student of the Sufi movement in Katwijk. During the war she also met colleagues Piet Esser, Paul Grégoire, Cor Hund and the Italian Dutchman Fred Carasso.

Since her first solo exhibition in 1948 at Kunsthandel Santee Landweer in Amsterdam, Charlotte van Pallandt's name as a sculptor has been definitively established. In the 1950s, together with Jeanne Bieruma Oosting, Maaike Braat, Jeanne van Hall, Fri Heil, Ro Mogendorff and Liesbeth Dobbelmann, among others, she formed the female artists' association De Zeester. In 1958 she was one of the Dutch representatives at the 29th Venice Biennale and a year later she won the prestigious Prix de la Critique. Through the Haarlem sculptor Mari Andriessen she met his infamous fellow citizen, the painter Kees Verwey. A close and lasting friendship developed. She made, among other things, a portrait of him in bronze.

Together with the nude, the portrait is the main theme in Van Pallandt's oeuvre. Her subtle 'heads' demonstrate insight into the character and personality of the model. She managed to curb her own emotions. The portraits were not realistic because Charlotte was concerned with 'the essence'. She is one of the best Dutch portraitists ever with masterpieces such as those by Peter Scharoff, Adriaan Roland Holst, Fred Carasso, Ro Mogendorff and Albert Termote.

In 1953 she made a statue of Queen Juliana. In 1968 she made the famous statue of Queen Wilhelmina, which stands - in stone - in Rotterdam. A copy - in bronze - was placed in front of Noordeinde Palace in The Hague twenty years later. In 1974 she was commissioned by the municipality of Noordwijk to create a monument for the 150th anniversary of the rescue company that the Noordwijkers call "De Redder".

Van Pallandt worked a lot with the model Truus Trompert. She strove for an abstracted constructive order. Without complete abstraction, because nature remained the source of inspiration. That is why it is considered part of the figurative abstraction group. You will find her works in Centraal Museum, Kröller-Müller Museum, the Rijks, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Museum de Fundatie (362 objects) and Museum MORE.