Pieter van de Cuylen

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Pieter van de Cuylen-Köhli (1909–1990) painter, draftsman, sculptor, religious art, family grave in the Hörnli cemetery, Riehen, Basel-Stadt
Family grave in the Hörnli cemetery , Riehen, Basel-Stadt
Pieter van de Cuylen-Köhli (1909–1990) painter, draftsman, sculptor, religious art, glass painting, grave in Hörnli cemetery, Riehen, Basel-Stadt
Glass picture sculpture grave in the cemetery at Hörnli , Riehen, Basel-Stadt

Pieter van de Cuylen (born November 2, 1909 in Benrath on the Lower Rhine; † August 13, 1990 in Binningen near Basel) was a German painter , draftsman and sculptor .

life and work

Pieter van de Cuylen’s family was of Dutch origin. She moved to Dortmund in 1927 . The father was the musical director of the city ​​theater , the mother a singer. After high school, Pieter van de Cuylen trained as a drawing teacher at the Dortmund School of Applied Arts . In 1928 Cuylen moved to Berlin and attended the Art Academy of the West. He took part in exhibitions in Berlin. Impressed by a visit to an Emil Nolde exhibition , he broke with academic painting. From 1932 Cuylen was a member of the Reich Culture Commission, from which he was excluded in 1934. In 1936 he was banned from painting as a “degenerate artist” . In contact with Karl Hofer and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, however, he continued to paint in secret. On November 22, 1943, the property at Motzstrasse 78/80 in Berlin was bombed. Cuylen was buried with 26 other people in a cellar for 20 hours. In this situation, the artist made a vow: if he survived, his future religious work should be donated to a St. Mary's Church, as a reminder and as a token of thanks. The salvation was successful: German pioneers who, on the orders of their commanding officer, were to dig up a safe and bring it to safety, encountered the trapped. Injured and suffering from tuberculosis, Cuylen was taken to a hospital near Berlin. In December 1943 this hospital was bombed and the artist took the train from Berlin to St. Blasien , where he hovered between life and death in a sanatorium for a long time. After his recovery he lived in St. Blasien in the Black Forest.

From 1953 to 1962, Cuylen was increasingly visiting Basel and took part in exhibitions. In 1962 Peter van de Cuylen married Elisabeth Köhli. The couple took up residence in Binningen. The artist made a name for himself in the Basel region and showed his works in numerous exhibitions. In 1966 the first contact was made with Bad Zurzach . Cuylen participated with the pictures of his way of the cross in a thematic exhibition The Cross in Contemporary Art , and in 1971 in an exhibition Death in Contemporary Art . In the further course there was the opportunity to redeem his vows and bequeath his religious work to the Upper Church in Zurzach, a former St. Mary's Church. In 1989 Cuylen handed over the most important works of his religious work to the Catholic parish of Bad Zurzach.

In October 2005 Elisabeth van de Cuylen donated her husband's artistic estate to the Bad Zurzach + Baden Health Promotion Foundation, which in this context acquired the old Mauritiushof canon house. Since then there has been a permanent exhibition with selected works in the Mauritiushof.

Van de Cuylen 's work is assigned to archaic expressionism . The entire work is varied. From the drawing to the watercolor and the actual painting to the relief , the glass painting and the back glass technique, he used different techniques of the creative arts. His works can be viewed today in the Mauritiushof Bad Zurzach.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cuylen, Pieter van de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, sculptor and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Benrath
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1990
Place of death Binningen