Carel Willink ( 1900 - 1983 )

WILLINK Carel (Amsterdam, 1900 – 1983)
Painter, draftsman, collagist.
After having undertaken studies in engineering and then medicine, he opts for an artistic career, studying in Berlin at the Ecole Internationale de peinture directed by the painter Hans Baluschek. At first influenced by the expressionism Grosz and Dix, he produces collages in the manner of Kurt Schwitters and takes up abstraction. On returning to the Netherlands in 1923, he joins the artist's group De Driehoek and, close to Michel Seuphor, in September of that year begins contributing to Het Overzicht with his texts, poems and linocuts. He also designs the cover for the review's n°20 of January 1924. He then turns away from abstraction, first painting in a neoclassical style and returning to a more traditional technique. The œuvre of Giorgio de Chirico will be determinant for Willink's subsequent painting, and he becomes one of the principle representatives of 'magic realism,' though preferring the term 'imaginary realism.'

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