Background

Mr. Willink was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on March 7, 1900. He was the eldest of the two sons of Jan Willink and Wilhelmina Altes. His father was a professional car dealer and also an amateur painter.

Education

Carel Willink's father encouraged his son to start painting and he made his first painting when he was 14. Willink attended high school, studied medicine from 1918-1919, and then civil engineering at the Delft University of Technology. But he soon moved to the Hague, where he decided in 1919 that he wanted to be a painter.

Because modern art experienced its heyday in Germany, Willink decided to study at the Academy in Düsseldorf. There he was rejected after several weeks, and he continued at the Staatliche Hochschule in Berlin. Eventually he studied three years at Hans Baluschek's painting school, starting out with expressionist works. During his studies Carel Willink experimented with various art movements. At first he felt strongly drawn to Vincent van Gogh, and made a number of landscape paintings in a similar style. Soon he became impressed by the Expressionism of George Grosz and Otto Dix. Later he made collages in the style of Kurt Schwitters. Upon his graduation, he became influenced by the work of Wassily Kandinsky and constructivism, and produced a number of abstract paintings and watercolors. In 1923 he exhibited with the November Group at the Moabit Glaspalast.

Career

In 1924, Willink began to experiment with Cubism and Futurism and became a member of the avant-garde art group The Triangle. Through this group he came in contact with the writer Edgar du Perron. He was a key advisor and good friend of Willink until his death in May 1940. Willink then developed a distinctive style of painting: a kind of cubism with strong figurative elements related to the work of Fernand Leger. Examples of this style were the paintings Three Women, The Silver Wedding and The Clock. Willink, through these works, developed into a reasonably successful artist.

In 1926, during a study trip to Paris, Carel Willink came into contact with the neoclassicism of Pablo Picasso and his figurative paintings, often with classical subjects but with a slightly cubist character. During this period he made works such as Pigeons, and Girl with Dove.

On the advice of his friend Du Perron, Mr. Willink began to paint realistic in the early 1930s. During these years, he was concerned about the future: the stock market crash, the Depression, and the rise of Fascism and Nazism. He was tired of the unending series of experiments in painting, and decided to return to traditional painting techniques. Thus, he developed his timeless style of Magic Realism, set in a threatening and oppressive atmosphere.

During a tour of Italy in 1931, Carel Willink became fascinated by classical sculptures and Renaissance architecture. Both elements appear frequently in his work. He also became acquainted with the work of Giorgio de Chirico whose love of emptiness, depth, and extreme shadows would also influence his work. On his return from Italy he began working on two paintings: Late Visitors to Pompeii and Uproar, both of which are typical for his later work. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, it became hard for Willink to sell paintings, all the more so since he refused to sell paintings to German buyers. In order to meet his financial needs, he now began to make portraits. These photo realistic portraits perfectly fit into his own magical realist style.

In 1947, Mr. Willink stayed in Paris and, in 1951, he exhibitied at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Although his technique remained unchanged after the war, Willink experimented with new subjects. Between 1950 and 1965 he made a series of paintings of mostly exotic animals which he incorporated in unusual environments. A giraffe or a rhinoceros in a sculpture garden creates a strange effect. He also combined a nuclear power plant, an atomic explosion or a demolition machine with ruined temples and weathered statues. In 1961, he made a study trip to the Italian Bomarzo Gardens. The bizarre, monstrous statues, designed by Pirro Ligorio, returned a few times in his work.

In 1968 he had an exhibition in Municipal Arnhem, in 1973 - retrospective exhibition at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. In 1980 Carel Willink organized a retrospective exhibition of realistic work at the Stedelijk Museum. He worked with Jouke Mulder on his biography during 1983. The same year he participated in exhibition "Zenith" at the National Museum in Belgrade.

Achievements

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  Carel Willink was the most famous, most popular and most expensive portrait painter in the Netherlands until his death. A small park in Amsterdam, near the Rijksmuseum, is named in his honour. His works received international success. Today among the public collections holding works by Carel Willink are: Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, The Netherlands, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • St. John the Baptist (Self-Portrait)

  • unknown title

  • Simeon the stylite

  • Jobstijding

  • Wilma with a Cat

  • Chateau en Espagne

  • The Blimp

  • Self-Portrait

  • Sylvia Quiël

  • Self-Portrait with Wilma van der Meulen

  • Zelfportret met schedel

  • House with two stairs

  • Girl with a Small Sheep (Girl in Renaissance Costume)

  • J. Bergmans

  • De laatse bezoekers van Pompeii

  • Portrait of a Lady

  • Townscape

  • Sleeping Zebra

  • Wilma

  • The Execution

  • unknown title

  • Arcadian Landscape

  • Avenue at Versailles

  • Composition

  • Flowers

  • Freefall

  • Portrait of Queen Juliana

  • Two Women

  • Zeppelin

  • Cityscape

  • The Country House

  • Landscape with toppled statue

  • Parc de Sceaux

Connections

In 1927 Carel Willink married Mies van der Meulen, but she left him two years later. Then he painted Venus Resting with Wilma Jeuken as the model. They married in 1930 and moved to Amsterdam, where Willink lived until his death. In 1969, Willink married Mathilda de Doelder, who was an eccentric society figure and had lived with him since 1963. After Mathilde had damaged the portrait he had done of Wilma Jeuken in 1952 they separated. In 1975 Mr. Willink started living together with Sylvia Quiël, with whom he spent the rest of his life. On May 19, 1977 Mathilde de Doelder said that she would commit suicide if the separation wouldn't be settled in a way that would be acceptable to her. Eventually, she received 135.000 guilders and started her own gallery in Amsterdam. She also started an affair with coke dealer Gerard Vittali, who found her dead on her bed on October 25, 1977. However, it was unclear if she had been killed or had committed suicide.

Father:

Jan Willink

Mother:

Wilhelmina Altes

Wife:

Mies van der Meulen

Wife:

Wilma Jeuken

Wife:

Mathilda de Doelder

Wife:

Sylvia Quiël

References

• Willink