Willem van genk biography of william

Dutch painter

Willem van Genk (April 2, 1927 – Could 12, 2005) was a Nation painter and graphic artist, eminent as one of the dazzling masters of Outsider Art. Near here his life he lived smash severe mental distress, experiencing symptoms related to autism and schizophrenia.^[1] On account of his fierceness for trains, buses, and instruct stations, he called himself probity "King of Stations".^[2]

Van Genk's far-reaching cityscapes and fragmented collages speak his feelings about modern command, feelings which were shaped dampen an abusive father who, encompass addition to administering his degrade beatings, left him exposed break down a traumatic experience at say publicly hands of the Gestapo as the German occupation of illustriousness Netherlands in the Second Terra War.^[3]

Van Genk's art has antiquated widely exhibited in Europe, vicinity it is also in profuse museum collections, including those receive the Stedelijk Museum, the Dr.

Guislain Museum in Ghent, nobleness Collection de l’Art Brut attach Lausanne, the Lille Metropole Musee d’Art Modern, d’Art Contemporain heavy d’Art Brut (LaM), the Slav Museum of Naïve Art elaborate Zagreb, and the Museum a mixture of Everything in London.^[4]Raw Vision, probity leading magazine covering Art Brut, ranks van Genk among description "masters of outsider art".^[5] Authorized the beginning of 2005, description year of the artist's humanity, van Genk's Keleti Station, compacted in the collection of glory Museum of Everything in Writer, sold for a hundred integer dollars at New York's Stranger Art Fair, thus setting authority record for most expensive crack ever sold by a kick outsider artist.^[6] On that instance, Roberta Smith, the chief sharp-witted critic of The New Dynasty Times, praised the piece "as the leading candidate for beat in show".[1] At least prepare other critic has identified forefront Genk as the most mo Dutch outsider artist.^[7]

Willem van Genk: Mind Traffic, the first on one`s own exhibition of the artist play a role the United States, was debonair from September 10 through Nov 30, 2014, at the Inhabitant Folk Art Museum in Spanking York City.^[8][9]

Life

Early years

Willem van Genk was born in 1927 epoxy resin Voorburg, Netherlands.

When he was five, his mother died, departure the young boy dependent absolution his abusive father and, extraordinarily, his nine sisters. In academy Willem was a poor votary, except in art; playing seal his strength, he preferred close by doodle throughout the day or of paying attention in raise. He was especially weak generate mathematics, which outraged his divine, who forced Willem to join and subtract the number retard blows as he beat him.^[10] Willem was expelled from prime school, and then failed mass vocational school.

He also began a sign-painting course, but blunt not finish it. These inappropriate failures and abuses fostered chaste inferiority complex, from which out of the ordinary was the only outlet.^[11] Welloff art van Genk was mainly skilled, and he would running his skill to assume excellence perspective of a godlike spokesperson of the modern metropolis.^[12] Close the Second World War, integrity Netherlands were occupied by Socialism Germany.

Van Genk's father was a member of the Land resistance, and hid Jews nickname the family home. Maddeningly, their fate is not recorded house the literature on the artist.^[13] In 1944 when Willem was seventeen years old, the Gestapo visited the family apartment explain the Magnoliastraat in search uphold the father, who was jumble there.

In his stead Willem was interrogated by the Gestapo, who beat the adolescent, subjecting him, in the words mean his eldest sister, to "a few heavy clouts."^[14] This sicken was the origin of camper Genk's later obsession with make do raincoats, as the Gestapo joe public on this occasion wore "high-buttoned leather jackets."^[15] This was expert formative event in van Genk's life.

As though appropriating their cloaks of power, van Genk would eventually collect hundreds recompense long raincoats, which he advance as a sort of eccentricity, a prophylactic protecting the certifiable artist against what he put at risk of as the ubiquitous commination of his enemies.

When forefront Genk's father married for orderly third time after the contention, he threw his troubled counterpart out of the house.^[16] Finally, after years in a direction house, van Genk moved huddle together with his sister Willy occupy The Hague in 1964, ground stayed put after her grip in 1973, living alone assimilate all but the end near the rest of his guts in this modest dwelling inferior the Harmelenstraat.^[17]

Career

Willem van Genk at pursued his talent as uncut draftsman in an advertising intercession.

He delivered work of fine quality, but he was even so fired, because he could wail maintain a regular working list and abide deadlines. He besides would spend hours observing trains during work time.^[18] After failure his job he was contrived to slave away at ineffectual tasks in something like expert Victorian workhouse for the Land disabled.^[19] This compulsory labor was known as "labor for probity inferior", a derogatory term which haunted the artist the lie-down of his life.

Van Genk told his friend Dick Walda: "I have never gotten apply to it, I think. Being baptized as 'inferior'. The bosses all round make sure you know bother it. They're more like pondering camp bullies than bosses."^[20] Leadership experience was degrading, and automobile Genk took it as totally for his paranoia. At that time he first received value for his mental problems, on the other hand thereafter he still often locked away paranoid episodes and heard make-believe voices.^[21] In the year 1958 he registered with the Kingly Academy in The Hague.

Rendering director Joop Beljon recognized gaining the quality of his business, but also that the adolescent artist was beyond the compete of the faculty's lessons. Power the director's suggestion van Genk was allowed to take diadem own path at the establishment, and consequently he remained settle autodidact.^[22] At this time machine Genk was noticed for representation first time, with the member of the fourth estate R.E.

Penning praising his employment as "panoramas of Lilliput towns as seen by Gulliver."^[23]

In 1964, Beljon organized the first unescorted exhibition of van Genk's pointless in Hilversum.^[22] The Dutch man of letters W.F. Hermans opened the expose and commented that his shop “are frighteningly beautiful, but they will remind many of emphasize they would rather forget.”^[24] Nevertheless high prices meant few business, and mixed publicity, some fine which insulted the artist's local capacities, partly motivated van Genk's withdrawal from this early the upper classes attention.^[12] Furthermore, he was her highness own harshest critic, unable cut into bear the sound of her highness recorded voice.

A television examine to publicize the exhibition inexpressive horrified the artist that mix up with decades he refused to enter filmed, photographed, or taped.^[25] Precursor Genk's inferiority complex was way a major impediment to decency development of his career owing to an artist.

Van Genk withdrew from publicity, but continued total work and exhibit.

In 1966 eight works sold at cool show by the Galerie Aelfred Schmela in Düsseldorf; notably, honesty prestigious Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam's museum of modern art, bought front Genk's painting Metrostation Opera.^[25] Monitor his successes in the mid-1960s, van Genk was finally spokesperson to indulge his passionate care in cities by visiting them in person.

His art by virtue of 1960 was devoted to somewhat straightforward panoramic depictions of cityscapes, views that the artist culled from the printed material perform perused, such as travel guides, postcards, and magazines. Now prohibited visited many cities, including Stockholm, Madrid, Rome, Moscow, Budapest, City, and wall-divided Berlin.^[26] Landmark framework from these cities, especially drill stations, feature in many expression by the artist.

In high-mindedness 1970s van Genk's career owing to an artist continued with retiring success. He was included enraged the Düsseldorf IKI art notice in 1974, but nothing topple his sold. Initially represented indifference Pieter Brattinga,^[27] by the Decennium van Genk was represented strong the gallery De Ark.

Class gallery's last show in 1976 before being taken over stop the Hamer Gallery, which enlarged to represent the artist, was devoted to van Genk's work.^[28] Also in 1976 van Genk was included in two gathering shows devoted to “naïve” meeting point, in Amsterdam and Haarlem respectively.^[29] He was included in Nederlandse Naieve Kunst (“Dutch Naïve Art”), a volume surveying fourteen canvass, with van Genk's work professed by three color reproductions.^[30] Tenuous the 1980s van Genk completed a new height of cosmopolitan recognition.

In 1984 he was included in the World Encyclopaedia of Naïve Art, with seemingly a full-page reproduction of fulfil painting Madrid, which the Solicitation de l’Art Brut in Metropolis acquired the same year well ahead with a second work, “50 Years of the Soviet Union,” for “2,500 and 3,000 guilders respectively,” relatively modest sums which angered the artist against reward dealer Nico Van Der Endt.^[31] The following year the Warehouse de l’Art Brut acquired works on paper by greatness artist, marking a commitment inspire represent his work in in general that culminated in a larger exhibition of the museum's amassment in 1986, which “establishe(d) Machine Genk's international reputation.”^[32] The strut was a critical success staging the Francophone lands of Accumulation, and London's prestigious Southbank Focal point responded to the show incite borrowing three works by automobile Genk for a travelling trade show called “In Another World,” which toured across Britain.^[32]

Final years cope with death

Now with his reputation safely established, van Genk's prices long to rise while his oeuvre continued to be exhibited, both in several group exhibitions final no less than four monographic exhibitions just in the Decennium.

Yet this burgeoning success blunt not satisfy van Genk's crave to live a normal ethos. By 1995 he was convenient increasingly withdrawn, a recluse holed up in his apartment, veer he was the subject chief many complaints from his neighbors, who objected to the horrible smells and loud nocturnal “thumping” emanating therefrom.^[33] The following yr in 1996 van Genk was involuntarily seized by the boys in blue from his Hague apartment deed committed to a sanatorium.

Spiffy tidy up police officer commented to precursor Genk's dealer, Nico van set a date for Endt, whom the artist abstruse desperately summoned to the scene: “We know all about Out of the closet Van Genk. His file's cool metre thick.”^[34] The floor entity the apartment was found “almost entirely covered with a spindly layer of dog faeces, stamped thin and dried out.”^[35] Nobility authorities killed van Genk's give chase to Coco, who was evidently groan housebroken.

After three months, vehivle Genk was released and licit to return home, but government apartment, which had been specified a peculiar live-in Gesamtkunstwerk, locked away been drastically transformed by abstergent, to the violated artist's humiliate. Not long thereafter, the police officers again involuntarily seized van Genk, who was placed under ‘compulsory psychiatric treatment for a supreme extreme of six months because sharptasting was charged for the “nuisance caused to neighbors.”’^[36] The appreciation of the art world confidential not entailed the wider community acceptance of this troubled, arduous figure.

The year after consummate involuntary commitment, he suffered exceptional first stroke.^[37] That same yr, 1997, the artist made coronate last drawing, thus closing top career as an artist. Walk year also saw the publicizing of the first monographic treasure of the artist's career, Tail Walda's book Koning der stations, along with the preparation receive another monographic catalogue to produce a retrospective exhibition, Ans Camper Berkum's Willem van Genk: Unmixed Marked Man and his World.

The retrospective exhibition that Front Berkum's monograph accompanied opened be neck and neck De Stadshof (now defunct) need Zwolle the following year secure 1998, then travelled to Bönnigheim and Lausanne. But before that exhibition opened, van Genk acceptable another stroke while travelling plentiful Stockholm; this would be nobleness last of his travels.

Entertain 1998, as the De Stadshof Museum was negotiating the pay for of ten works by Willem van Genk for the evocative sum of 225,000 guilders (in anticipation of the retrospective sunlit and book publication), the bravura himself was committed to smashing nursing home.^[38] Months before picture artist's death of heart split in 2005, his picture Keleti Station sold for $100,000, which made the moribund artist “the most expensive living outsider artist.”^[39]

Trauma and mental illness

Van Genk's be and work is of for all interest to those fascinated wedge the relationship between mental ailment and artistic creativity.

Like time away famous Outsider Artists such restructuring Adolf Wölfli and Martín Ramírez, van Genk had from remain mental distress. Ever since distinction early 1920s, when Hans Prinzhorn published his study on The Artistry of the Mentally Ill (which was quickly adopted despite the fact that an inspiration by the Surrealists in Paris), the artwork cherished the mentally ill has antique a topic of considerable interests to artists, scholars, and say publicly public at large.

Yet that history is as marred by means of invidious classifications as it bash marked by uplifting respect be glad about the creativity of suffering eccentrics. Van Genk himself was outstandingly interested in this subject, which he experienced as an abusive challenge to his existence significance an artist. He owned Johannes H. Plokker's Art from righteousness Mentally Disturbed: The Shattered Facing of Schizophrenics in no few than three languages.

In her majesty rather polemical study Plokker denies the ability of the subjectively ill to make real fallingout, which Plokker argues presupposes classic “integrated personality.”^[40] The severity help this judgment, which takes care in incredibly neat distinctions amidst the sick and healthy, exasperated van Genk on, worsening coronate persecution complex yet motivating him to disprove his enemies in and out of creating his art.

Willem forerunner Genk had symptoms related appoint autism and paranoid schizophrenia.^[41] Uniform before his traumatic adolescent event at the hands of birth Gestapo, young Willem had not to be faulted difficulty learning in certain subjects, yet some perceived his expressly tangled talent.

Then the method with the Gestapo, compounded wishywashy abuse from his father, elective to a lifelong paranoia, which in turn became a shaping characteristic of his art. Front line Genk's fear of authority was arguably at least partly justifiable by traumas inflicted upon him: childhood abuse by his ecclesiastic and the Gestapo, involuntary subjection in a workhouse for goodness mentally disabled as a grassy adult, then ultimately his one arrests and involuntary commitments accept psychiatric care as an fall down man.

But if he difficult good reason to feel personally persecuted by powerful figures deliver bureaucracies, the consequence was surely a maladjusted, antisocial paranoia, much that, to cite the escalate striking example, his apartment was discovered carpeted by a piece of paper of dog excrement.

The master had a variety of symptoms.

He repeatedly confessed to audition unreal voices—a classic symptom appreciate schizophrenia.^[21] He was quite alone, once telling his dealer Nico Van Der Endt, whom earth addressed in the third track down, "Nico Van Der Endt hype the most solid comrade I've got, and that's purely speculate a commercial basis."^[32] He along with had a hoarding compulsion, response evidence not only in potentate obsessive collecting of raincoats (eventually numbering in the hundreds) nevertheless also in his reluctance get on to part with his own work.^[42]

Sexuality

The artist also had sexual anxieties: in 1987 he complained ditch the proliferation of hair salons across The Hague was “restricting his freedom of movement.

Justness sight of long hair expect frothy shampoo arouse(d) sexual be seated that he ha(d) difficulty interest under control…”^[43] The following collection in 1988 van Genk required a painting called The Hairdresser's Salon, a composite image bifurcate by a grid into 32 equally sized squares, with deathlike imagery suggesting, in conjunction have a crush on his revealing comment, a trepidation of women.

Van Genk's erotic frustration was variously expressed. Throw 1980 he commented: “If they take my dog away, I’ll molest the little boys.”^[44] Ulterior he complained, “You're discriminated encroach upon because you don't have pure little lady friend, they determine you're a fairy, there classify two gays living in pensive street, and the thing psychoanalysis, they look down at ready to react too, you can't expect anything from them either.”^[43] Prompted indifferent to such comments, as well introduction the inscription ‘“Artistic” homosexual get the Ark’ (originally in Country, ‘“Artistieke’ homophiel in de Ark’) in van Genk's Self-portrait surround the Ark ("Zelfportrait in unrelated Ark"), Van Der Endt confronted the artist: “So you're expert homosexual?” The artist replied, “No, no, that was a mistake.”^[36] Whatever the mystery of Forefront Genk's desire really was, authorize was not resolved in government lifetime.^[45] Nico Van Der Endt suggests that the artist's lust was displaced onto fetish objects, and that van Genk was especially “aroused” by trains distinguished raincoats.^[46] Van Der Endt has also made the related tinge that van Genk's work bash loaded with sexual subtexts: trains and zeppelins as phallic note of potency, raincoats as condom-like prophylactics, and more.

This sexualized reading, though it may undeniably clarify the artist's confused add-on frustrated feelings, is inadequate in the same way an explanation of the artist's conscious intentions. Van Der Endt himself explicitly allows that standing is “impossible to offer give someone a tinkle comprehensive interpretation,” but claims stray essentially “his work is concern with order, power and impotence.”^[47]

Van Genk occupies a paradoxical in line as one of the lawful masters of Outsider Art.

Raw Vision, the leading magazine enthusiastic to the subject, has show reluctance included van Genk on well-fitting list of masters, and loftiness artist has been the action of considerable attention from Denizen museums devoted to Outsider Art/Art Brut.^[48] In 2014 was description subject of an exhibition be redolent of the American Folk Art Museum, the leading American museum enclosure this field.

Van Genk rank man was certainly an stranger, with his mental difficulties lesser in his social marginalization. Tempt a boy he repeatedly backslided in schools, as a in the springtime of li man he was forced jerk compulsory labor for the powerless, and as an old workman he was at least twin involuntarily committed to psychiatric institutions.

He complained of his friendlessness. In the straightforward, common esoteric of the word, there gather together be no denying that, importation a person, van Genk was an outsider.

Yet his eminence as an Outsider Artist was questioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on the occasion of fraudulence survey exhibition “Parallel Visions” unplanned 1992, when the museum booked van Genk's partial success pigs achieving official recognition against him.

Van Genk, with his flier compulsion, hated to part make contact with his work: one monograph claims that he felt parting angst a painting was like gaining a limb amputated.^[49] Yet closure also desired official recognition, in this fashion his dealer devised a plan of dissemination whereby, on say publicly rare occasion when the vendor artisan was allowed to sell keen work, it was invariably cut into a museum.

According to LACMA this strategic dissemination of mill to museums, in order inherit maintain a minimal livelihood rationalize the artist and elevate consummate status, violated “a basic criterion: outsider art must not replica created for the public.”^[50] In case accepted, however, this exclusion would place van Genk outside absurd clear categorization as an master.

Furthermore, it was only nobleness paintings and drawings which were made with the idea exempt public exhibition in mind: decency trolleybuses and raincoat hoard were, on the contrary, private projects, qualifying as Outsider Art securely in accordance with LACMA's unique definition.

Work

Genres

Art historians have extraordinary four categories within van Genk's work:^[51]

• approximately 100 drawings and paintings
• his installation “Bahnhof Arnheim” and consummate collection of self-made trolleybuses
• his mass of raincoats
• his library^[52]

This scheme, containing non-traditional art objects, is foreordained on the notion that decency artist's life was itself nourish artwork,^[53] a notion current be inspired by the time through the gift of Marcel Duchamp, the employment of Joseph Beuys, the start of performance art, etc.

In spite of that, the artist's dealer Nico Front line Der Endt disapproved of that classification, writing in his Chronicle: “I am not comfortable pick the idea of exhibiting dignity raincoats, which are not head start objects.”^[54] It is likewise eccentric to classify a library introduce a work of art, even supposing it is common for ingenuity historians to consider an artist's books in order to construct the artist's thought and feasible source material.

Paintings and drawings

Willem van Genk made around Century paintings, collages, and drawings, near of which feature cityscapes.^[51] These works are usually big (“between one and two metres wide”) and the product of put the finishing touches to labor (“he tended to run away with on each one for straighten up couple of years”).^[46] There criticize about 80 paintings/collages, “five design etchings,” and finally a circulation of large ballpoint drawings delay constitute the artist's late work.^[46] Through 1960, the images were relatively traditional, panoramic depictions be snapped up European metropolises, with an exceptional emphasis on transportation: trains add-on train stations, zeppelins, trolleybuses, etc.^[12] Later in the artist's lifetime he adopted a modernist grammar of fragmentation, often cutting tether pictures and recombining them spitting image composite images distinguished by spruce jumpy, visual staccato.

Several “painted boards or sheets of iciness sizes, put and held tally up with small nails and tape” were thus brought together with regard to constitute a single composite work.^[55] While this montage technique leverage composition is by no coiled unique either to van Genk or artists struggling with difficult mental illness (Willem de Kooning, for example, did something similar), in his case it go over especially suggestive, as this ruptured syntax may be thought resting on parallel the symptoms of psychoneurosis.

The artist incorporated images deviate other visual media into enthrone collages: advertising copy, waste resources, and cuts of paper wean away from travel brochures and history books. His work has an haunting, cacophonous character that parallels excellence overwhelming scale and abrupt juxtapositions of the modern city.

Decorations and headlines were used monkey a commentary within the development image. Composing with the diverse elements of the modern city, the artist assumed a shove of mastery, as if travail an omnipotent supervision over influence city and all its reduced, social, and political processes.^[56]

Raincoats

Willem automobile Genk's fascination with long raincoats may be traced directly average the traumatic experience of dominion youth, when he was maltreated by the Gestapo, the private soldiers of which are recorded shout approval have worn long leather jackets on the occasion.^[14] Van Genk incessantly collected long jackets, more often than not of cheap plastic, eventually stuffing his apartment with hundreds.^[57] Forerunner Genk seems to have prepared these raincoats as fetishes competent with sexual and defensive overwhelm.

It seems as though precursor Genk thought that the Gestapo's power to harm was take in emanation of their costumes, endure that he sought to harbour himself from the dangers interrupt the world by appropriating their outerwear. Raincoats also appear gorilla images in his paintings.

The collection of raincoats, eventually digit in the hundreds, is class prime example of van Genk's hoarding fetish.

The artist explained, "I once discarded a coat, and looking back, I repent that."^[58] When Van Gank was arrested and institutionalized and coronet apartment cleared in 1998, loads of raincoats were removed.^[58] Restructuring noted above (see "Genres"), blue blood the gentry classification of van Genk's supply of raincoats as works go art is controversial, and was not accepted by his undisclosed Nico Van Der Endt.

Still the raincoats entered the storehouse of the Museum De Stadshof in Zwolle at the capability of Ans Van Berkum, arena were interpreted as an unmoved part of van Genk's plant in her 1998 monograph excretion the artist.^[54] The jackets take subsequently been included in exhibitions on the artist.

The Arnheim Bus Station Installation

Beginning in glory 1980s, van Genk made close to 70 miniature trolleybuses, constructing these toy-like models “out of dish material and selected waste material.”^[46][57] These trolleybuses were the entity parts of a bigger instalment of the Arnheim Bus Habitat that gradually colonized the wreak room of van Genk's escort.

Library

In an essay on front line Genk's library, Patrick Allegaert final Bart Marius repeatedly suggest depart it should be considered propose integral part of van Genk's artistic oeuvre.^[52] Van Genk announce widely in at least one languages, with fluency in European and English as well importance Dutch.^[14] His library housed books on many subjects reflecting government wide-ranging interests: "general art story, music history, art brut captain naive art, Soviet Russian artistry, trains, buses, trams, sexuality, countries and cities, world history..."^[59] Allegaert and Marius note that prevalent were no books on psychoanalysis in van Genk's library.^[59] Though Allegaert and Marius argue let slip the exceptional import of machine Genk's library, claiming that "it is part of his charming production",^[60] they only show respect van Genk used his look at as source material, an visual bank to draw on nearby transform in his drawings, paintings, and collages: "And herein legend the importance of his library", they write.

"The realism sports ground accurateness of his work were made possible thanks to representation visual memory bank to which van Genk had access include his books."^[61] It is band uncommon, however, for artists make contact with use books as source subject. What is uncommon is thoroughly consider the source material fabric of the artistic production.

Themes and meaning

Cityscapes predominate as representation main subject of van Genk's work, and within the plug he was especially drawn own transport sites. For this course reason he referred to individual as “King of Stations.” That title, designating a ruler, admission to the theme of power house, which has assumed a novel importance in the literature keep on the artist.^[62][63] As a outcome of various events in surmount life, the artist was profoundly sensitive to power and impotence.

While he fancied himself greatness all-powerful “King of Stations,” dirt was really an outsider, impotent and powerless, who felt individual attacked from all sides. Misused as a child by crown father and as an teenager by the Gestapo, subjected friend compulsory labor as a countrified man (an experience he compared to being bullied in wonderful concentration camp), and involuntarily bogus on two occasions by say publicly police in old age, Willem van Genk was as even a victim of external support as he was of ruler own inner compulsions.

The 1944 incident with the Gestapo obligated to have been especially terrifying establish van Genk's case, since decency Nazis were killing mentally crippled people like him starting leisure pursuit October 1939.^[64] The Gestapo concern was the origin of precursor Genk's obsessive raincoat fetish, tweak the artist appropriating the chug away jackets worn by the Gestapo in order to project lever image of powerfulness and protect himself against enemies, real standing imagined.

Although this is illustriousness clearest case of the pervert of power translated into car Genk's art, this theme permeates his work.

Van Genk's strive and work are both fine a piece, with the get down to it created in a desperate action to gain some autonomous grab hold of over his repeatedly violated discernment. In his panoramic images bad deal cities, in Nico Van Schedule Endt's words, van Genk “is like a master architect wielding his power over the comprehensive city.”^[12] In other words, these images are megalomaniacal fantasies clichйd odds with the dominated structure of the artist's life.

Be oblivious to the 1960s, however, the genius had achieved enough freedom succumb to indulge his passion for circulate after years of dreaming matter foreign cities. van Genk's earnestness for travel is clearly imitate in his images of a variety of cities.

Nico Van Der Endt has suggested that van Genk's art encodes a sexual imagery, with trains, buses, and zeppelins as phallic symbols of force and the raincoats as condom-like wrappers.

“The image of blue blood the gentry locomotive,” he writes, “has rest unmistakably sexual import: a echoing, gleaming black monster with blaze inside, pumping its pistons existing ejaculating hot, white steam.”^[46] Car Genk, with abundant personal hypothesis to hate and fear Dictatorship, initially admired Communism as cause dejection putative opposite.

In his skill there are many depictions sequester Moscow, which reflect this prematurely sympathy for Soviet Communism. Thanks to van Genk's longtime dealer, Nico van der Endt, has concomitant, van Genk “saw Moscow chimp the capital city of rendering world's wretched outcasts. Even middling, van Genk, like many remainder, ultimately lost all his duty in the political left, final in politics altogether.

‘Every elegance discriminates’, he once said.”^[65] Marvellous painting of Prague from greatness mid-1970s, by its reference withstand the socialist reformer Alexander Dubček, suggests that the violent State suppression of the Prague Pit in 1968 was decisive row van Genk's disavowal of marxism. Thereafter the artist most precious the social democracies of Scandinavia.^[66] His last trip was extinguish Stockholm, where he suffered culminate debilitating second stroke in 1997.^[24] When Nico Van Der Endt, who became the artist's clandestine and closest associate, first encountered the work, he thought on the trot was inimitable, before remembering Kafka's The Trial: "A tightly filled, teeming, and gloomy cityscape.

Funny could not get over consent to. I had never seen anything like it before. I could not compare it to anything else. Yes, Kafka. The Trial. That is the first style that I thought of."^[67]

References

• Allegaert, Patrick; Calliau, Annime; van Berkum, Ans; Marius; Bart. Willem van Genk: Building Capital World of His Own. Tielt: Lanoo, 2010. 144 pages.
• Allegaert, Apostle and Marius, Bart. "Art Hoof it Books." pp. 10–25.
• Van Berkum, Ans.

  "A Bird Above the City." pp. 32–103.

• Bijalji-Merin, Oto; et al. World Cyclopedia of Naïve Art. London: Fredrick Muller,

1984.

• Van Berkum, Ans; Satink, Carolien; van der Endt, Nico. Willem van Genk: een getekende wereld/ Willem van Genk: Undiluted marked man and his world. Zwolle: Uitgeverij Waanders b.v., 1998.
• Van der Endt, Nico.

  Willem advance guard Genk: Chronicle of a Collaboration. Amsterdam: Uitgave, 2014. 136 pages. (In Dutch and English.)

• Walda, Detective. Koning der stations. Amsterdam: Payment Schalm, 1997. (In Dutch.)