Carel Willink

Carel Willink (1966)

Bust of Carel Willink near the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Albert Carel Willink (born March 7, 1900 in Amsterdam , † October 19, 1983 there ) was a Dutch painter .

Life

youth

Carel Willink was the son of a car dealer in Amsterdam. The father had painting as a hobby and often visited exhibitions in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum with Carel and his younger brother Jan Willink . At the age of 14, Carel fell under the spell of modern artists such as Diego Rivera , Marc Chagall and Wassili Kandinsky .

In 1919 he broke off his architecture studies at the Delft Technical University to become a painter himself. After a very short, unsuccessful stay at the State University in Berlin in 1920 , he continued his teaching at Hans Baluschek's school. The first exhibition took place in 1932 in the Glaspalast in Berlin- Moabit . He made a close friendship with Herbert Behrens-Hangeler in Berlin . At that time Willink created abstract paintings in the style of the November group and constructivism .

1924-1950

In 1924 he returned to Holland and set a turning point in Willink's work with the work De zilveren bruiloft (The Silver Wedding). Gradually he turned to realistic, figurative representations. A year later he still saw himself as a "futurist" . In 1926 he visited the workshop of Henri Le Fauconnier in Paris , where he also worked for a short time. There he also studies works by Pablo Picasso and representatives of Surrealism .

Between 1926 and 1928 he was married for the first time to his model for nudes , Mies van der Meulen , an unhappy marriage. He was friends with the writer Edgar du Perron , for whom he made book illustrations.

The magical realist

Between 1927 and 1930, against the spirit of the times, he studied the technology of earlier eras and turned entirely to the style now known as Magical Realism . The skies are now already dark (characteristic of Willink), often ghostly gloomy; often the painting appears pessimistic. An example of this is De jobstijding (The Bad News , 1932). In the meantime he had found a new partner, Wilma Jeuken, whom he married in 1933.

In the 1930s he often painted city views with houses from the period 1880–1915, and later landscapes with classical images, and biblical characters such as Job and John the Baptist . At that time he also destroyed at least one of his own abstract youth works.

Shortly before the Second World War, Carel Willink also began to paint realistic portraits of friends and clients in business. This enabled him, even during the war years, to make a fair living. The mood generally remains gloomy: his work Simeon de zuilenheilige ( Simeon the Pillar Saint ), which was created around the outbreak of World War II in 1939, shows the ascetic meditating on his column, with a burning city in the background. That year he had a major exhibition in the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam .

The post-war years until 1975

After the liberation of the Netherlands (1945), Willink persisted in the gloomy, alienating mood of his work. He was particularly impressed by the new threat of nuclear weapons . In the 1950s he painted landscapes with various animals and deserted, gloomy city faces with monumental, classic buildings. Around 1960–1963, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis , when nuclear war loomed around the world, Willink's paintings again felt a doom and gloom.

His wife Wilma, whom he loved dearly, died in 1960. As a distraction, he traveled to Rome and at least twice to the picture garden of Bomarzo, Italy . He then met his future third wife, Mathilde de Doelder . Characteristic of this time is Mathilde tussen de monsters (Mathilde between the monsters, 1966), on which Mathilde is depicted naked between the bizarre Bomarzo statues when a thunderstorm threatens. In the meantime, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam held a large exhibition of his works in 1961.

In 1969 Willink married his model Mathilde, whom he portrayed several times in clothes by the fashion designer Fong Leng. At that time he painted, among other things, a landscape with the lunar landing vehicle of Apollo 9 , and some lonely desert landscapes with London monumental buildings. When Mathilde damaged a portrait of Wilma Jeuken painted by her husband in 1975, the marriage broke up.

The late years

Grave in the Zorgvlied cemetery in Amsterdam

Willink had already made the acquaintance of Sylvia Quiël at that time. As soon as the separation from Mathilde was settled by a court, Willink married her (1977). Carel Willink painted his fourth wife, with whom he spent a happy retirement, as Rustende dryade (Resting Dryade , 1977). Willink's painting also brightened up and pessimism disappeared. In 1980 there was another exhibition in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum. He has also been a guest on TV talk shows a few times . In August 1983 Willink developed a liver problem, which he succumbed to two months later. In the winter of 1984–1985, an exhibition of his entire work in the Arnhem Museum of Modern Art attracted more than 80,000 visitors. He received the royal award of an officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau .

A friendship existed with the German conductor and composer Frieder Weissmann , who died a short time later and was buried in the same grave in the Zorgvlied cemetery in Amsterdam.

Exhibitions

• 1923: Great Berlin art exhibition , participation in the Novembergruppe section, Berlin- Moabit , state exhibition building at Lehrter Bahnhof ( glass palace )
• 1924: First solo exhibition, Amsterdam
• 1939: Retrospective, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
• 1951: Retrospective, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts
• 1956: Solo exhibition in Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
• 1961: Solo exhibition in Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
• 1973: Retrospective, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
• 1980: Solo exhibition in Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
• 1980/81: Les Réalismes, participation with five works, Paris, Center Georges Pompidou (December 17, 1980 to April 20, 1981) and Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle (May 10 to June 20, 1981)

posthumously:

• 1984/85: Retrospective in Arnhem , Museum of Modern Art.

Works

Works by Carel Willinks are shown in the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the Museum MORE in Gorssel, gem. Lochem (Gelderland), in the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem, in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp , in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

The painter's widow, Sylvia Willink-Quiël, owns the exclusive image rights to the Willink paintings and has registered the name Carel Willink © worldwide as a protected trade mark .

literature

• HLC Jaffé, Willink , first edition 1980 by Meulenhoff, Amsterdam; last edition published by Muyser, Amsterdam, ISBN 90-805428-1-4 . With many pictures. (2nd source of this article)
• Exhibition catalog AC Willink , Brüsel, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1951
• HP Dubois: AC Willink, Nederlandse schilders van dezen tijd , série A, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1940
• F. Duister and N. Koster (photos): Het atelier van Carel Willink , Venlo-Holland, Van Spijk BV, 1979
• AC Willink: De Schilderkunst in een kritik stadium , Amsterdam, Meulenhof, 1950.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carel Willink in the catalog of the German National Library
• www.carel-willink.nl Website composed by the painter's widow about Willink and his work (de, en, nl, fr) ( main source of this article )