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Charles Hubert Eyck gained fame as a painter, illustrator, sculptor, glazier and ceramist and created many monumental murals. He was a pioneer of the Limburg School, a group of artists who, in the first half of the 20th century, made wall and glass paintings in a romantic expressionist style, mainly in Roman Catholic churches.
When Eyck becomes deaf after an illness at the age of ten, he has to leave school. He started drawing at an early age and when he was fourteen his parents decided to send him to the Maastricht pottery factory 'Ceramique', where he decorated cups and saucers and thus contributed to the family's income. In the evenings he takes drawing lessons with the pottery painter Jos Tilmans. At the age of twenty-one he trained at the National Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. During this period he was strongly influenced by A. Derkinderen, known for his monumental wall and glass painting.
When he won the Prix de Rome in 1922, he went on a study trip to Italy. There he meets his future wife, the Swedish painter Karin Meyer, with whom he continues his journey to the south of France. They stayed there until the late 1920s and then returned to the Netherlands, where they lived in Schimmert in South Limburg. In those years, a group of progressive Catholic writers, journalists, architects, filmmakers and artists had gathered there, who were looking for more artistic freedom and openness, also towards non-Catholics. They published their vision in the magazine 'De Gemeenschap'.The visual artists, including Henri Jonas, Joep Nicolas, Otto van Rees and Charles Eyck, were known as the Limburg School.
In 1938, when Eyck became increasingly famous, he designed his own house 'Ravensbos' between Valkenburg and Schimmert, where he would live until the end of his life. Due to his deafness, Eyck leads a fairly secluded life. He reads a lot and writes letters to anyone he wants to exchange ideas with. He refused to become a member of the Kultuurkamer during the Second World War and at that time accommodated colleagues who had to go into hiding. After the war, he worked a lot in the many damaged churches and received commissions for resistance monuments.
In 1955 he was briefly a professor at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Due to a disagreement with the director, he resigns after a year. At that time, Eyck also opposed the emerging new art movements and made several trips abroad to gain inspiration to Spain, Greece and the Netherlands Antilles.
Eyck was a versatile artist with an unprecedentedly high production. His mission was to be of service to society, a community artist.
