Schitterende verontrusting: leven en werk van Carel Willink

Abstract

"Carel Willink (1900-1983) is an icon in Dutch art history. By the end of his life he had become the best-known living painter in the country. This was also because the media paid a lot of attention to his exciting personal life. But above all, his name was linked to numerous remarkable, alienating paintings. One vilified him because he did not paint abstractly and was not innovative. The other admired him for his excellent technique, and even more for the mysterious atmosphere of emptiness and ruin in his work. In 'Beautiful Disturbance', Rémon van Gemeren describes Willink's eventful life, and he establishes a relationship between his personality, work and time. Gradually the image emerges of an amiable and pessimistic man for whom the world was incoherent and ominous. That's why he painted things he liked, according to Van Gemeren. They were his only certainties in the midst of all powerlessness and transience. "