Laurens van Kuikartist • painter's Gravenmoer 1889-1963 Den Haag

In 1917, the painter-poet Laurens van Kuik was one of the founders of the Rotterdam avant-garde artists' federation De Branding. His artistic views were a mixture of theosophy and psychology: the artwork had to be derived from images from the subconscious mind. He himself called the result transcendental realism. This resulted in a remarkable oeuvre. Van Kuik, however, was hardly understood in his day. That is why after 1918 he turned to more traditional subjects such as still lifes and landscapes. In 1927 he left for Paris but returned to the Netherlands after five years, leaving behind all his work, which was subsequently lost. After a breakdown, he started again in 1945 in his very own, enigmatic idiom.