PHOTO:The Shifting Skies of Carel Willink

A little-known theme in the voluminous oeuvre of the well-known Dutch painter Carel Willink is the photography. In the 1930s, he began to photograph the Amsterdam sky from the window of his apartment and studio, situated on the corner the Ruysdaelkade / Stadhouderskade and overlooking the famous Rijksmuseum. He used the photographs as source material for sketches.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: FOAM Archive

Carel Willink (1900-83) was one of the foremost Dutch painters of magic realism and ‘imaginary realism’, as he called his painting style. He combined a refined, masterful technique, rendering reality in a detailed way, with a disconcerting, sometimes even threatening atmosphere in his work. His spectacular cloud formations were significant in his work. While making the sketches which preceded the painting process, he collected all kinds of images, such as postcards and newspaper photos. He also used a camera to record his subjects. The photos had a practical purpose; for Willink, it wasn’t about the photos themselves, but he used them as preliminary studies for his paintings. With his camera, he scanned the skies outside his studio window across from the Rijksmuseum, searching for, in his own words, “Shifting Skies”. Willink did not only photograph clouds, but also all kinds of objects that he used in his paintings. In addition to countless self-portraits, he photographed nudes, parks, sculptures and animals. Sometimes he removed the trees, houses and streets from the bottom of the negative or tilted and reversed the image. The fact that his cloud pictures served as a major source of inspiration is apparent in the paintings, the observant viewer can discover the similarities between the “Shifting Skies” in both the photos and the paintings.

Info: “Shifting Skies: Willink’s clouds above the Rijksmuseum”, Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Duration: 17/4-21/6/15, Days & Hours: Sat-Wed: 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri: 10:00-21:00, www.foam.org