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Lucebert, pseudonym of Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk (1924-1994), was an experimental painter-draftsman-poet and in the latter capacity he was briefly part of the CoBrA movement. As a remarkable multi-talent, he was greatly appreciated as a poet and visual artist both at home and abroad. He may have been better known to the general public as a poet, but in the sixties and seventies he mainly devoted himself to creating visual art. His paintings and drawings are characterised by great freedom and spontaneity. He painted whatever came to mind, without adhering to fixed motifs. From the fifties onwards he built up his drawings and gouaches from dots, lines and scratches, over which the - deliberately - clumsy shapes of human bodies and fantasy creatures were painted. His strongly experimental nature meant that he was also active in many other areas - he took photographs, made ceramics, wrote plays and created monumental murals. In 1949, Lucebert became the leader of the Movement of Fifty or the Fiftiers, the group of experimental poets that caused a great deal of commotion at the time. After this period of poetry, he focused mainly on the visual arts, which were called 'figurative-expressionist' from the 1960s onwards. His paintings, especially in the beginning strongly influenced by CoBrA, showed a rather pessimistic worldview. And his formal expression was in line with what Constant wrote in the CoBrA manifesto as early as 1948: 'An art that does not solve the problem that a pre-existing concept of beauty poses, but that recognizes no other standard than expressiveness, and spontaneously creates what intuition indicates.'
Born in Amsterdam where he lived in the Jordaan until he was thirteen, Lucebert attended the Handels-ULO after primary school. His drawing teacher, painter and clarinetist Johan van Hell, was so impressed by his gifted pupil that he gave him free private lessons. After that, Lucebert was able to attend the School of Arts and Crafts with a scholarship. After six months, his father decided that his son should contribute to the family income and, in the years that should have formed him artistically, Lucebert had one office job after another. In the meantime, he and his friends fed themselves with book reviews, reflections on philosophy, art and music during weekly meetings. In 1943, Lucebert was called up for the Arbeitseinsatz and put to work in an explosives factory in Germany, where he was allowed to go home on leave due to illness in 1944. There he decided to go into hiding with his brother. After the war, a nomadic life began. He stayed with friends and family, where he drew and wrote continuously. Every now and then he sold a drawing. In 1947, Lucebert became friends with Karel Appel and the poet Gerrit Kouwenaar. It was to them that he first introduced himself as Lucebert – bringer of light. This name would remain his own name for the rest of his life.
During an exhibition with Anton Martineau in Amsterdam, Lucebert became involved in the Experimental Group via Gerrit Kouwenaar. This group, founded in 1947 by Karel Appel, Corneille and Constant, would merge into the CoBrA group in 1948. Although Lucebert was only briefly involved in the CoBrA movement – he left in 1949 – it was of great significance to him. CoBrA stimulated him to put into practice the freedom of expression and the visual language he was looking for. Between 1949 and 1954, Lucebert – who had not yet been able to establish himself as a visual artist – devoted his time to seven poetry collections. These collections were received with great praise, and in a short time he established his name as ‘Keizer der Vijftigers’. It was only after his move to Bergen with his wife Tony Koek in 1953 that he received recognition as a visual artist after his admission to the Bergen Artists’ Centre in 1954. In Bergen he would live and work at the Boendermakerhof until his death. He started lithography, etching, silkscreen printing and oil painting there. From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s the emphasis for the first time was more on painting than on poetry. From that time on, dream creatures and mythical animals painted in a childish style made way for grimmer creatures. The friendly-looking visual language of before changed into a demonic and ironic vision of man, with distorted faces and human monsters.
In 1958 Lucebert had his first one-man exhibition in Galerie Espace in Haarlem and the following year in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In the years that followed he exhibited at home and abroad, sometimes eight exhibitions a year, possibly due to his enormous discipline and high work pace. Lucebert himself felt that his poetry was not related to his artistry. Yet everything stems from the same creative and spiritual source. And in both art forms his social criticism in which man with his obsessions and passions is central. Lucebert received prestigious awards for both his visual work and his poetry, including the Constantijn Huygens Prize in 1965 and the P.C. Hooft Prize in 1967; for his entire oeuvre, the Jacobus van Looy Prize from the Frans Hals Museum in 1990.
