Johan Mekkink - Beautiful charcoal drawing "Terschelling beach and dunes" 1973 - LARGE! - Sold
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- Description
- Johan Mekkink (1904-1991)
| Type of artwork | Drawing / Aquarelle |
| Year | 1973 |
| Technique | Charcoal |
| Support | Japanese Paper |
| Framed | Only in Passe-partout |
| Dimensions | 45 x 60 cm (h x w) |
| Passe-partout | 60 x 80 cm (h x w) |
| Signed | Hand signed |
Translated with Google Translate. Original text show .
- Johannes Mekkink was born on August 27, 1904 in Velp as the only son of Jannes Mekkink (1876-1958), furniture maker, and Klazina Scholts (1871-1958), a maid by profession. The couple had two more daughters. On July 25, 1945, Johannes Mekkink married Wilhelmina Maria Lukasina van den Brink in Velp, born on November 8, 1904 in Monster and died in Emmen on January 26, 1984. She was divorced and had two sons in her second marriage. Mekkink died on October 30, 1991 in Oosterbeek.
http://www.historici.nl/media/bwg/images/4/-028.jpg
Johan Mekkink around 1974 (from: J. van der Woude,
Johan's parents settled in Velp in 1901 in the smallest part of the farm that was located just opposite the driveway of Biljoen Castle. In the other part, the Mekkink grandparents lived with another unmarried son, a wallpaperer and upholsterer by profession, and a niece who did the housework. The houses were separated by the part where the workshop of the old furniture maker Mekkink and his son Jannes was located. Johan's parents worked long hours in this family business. They were small businesses that suffered from the major stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic crisis in the 1930s. Jannes Mekkink hoped that his son Johan would become co-owner of the furniture factory 'Mekkink en Zonen' with him and his grandfather and uncle.
However, Johan's youth was so influenced by the financial problems that were discussed on a daily basis that he felt nothing about it. He could draw well and in primary school he designed furniture that he made himself. This gave him his great love for wood. Later he also preferred to paint on panel. “You have to sand that with pumice stone and it has a sturdier surface than linen, which you always have to support.” He loved wide wooden frames, many of which he made himself, and always saw himself more as a craftsman than as an artist. His father, who had strong social feelings and was a thorough professional, had a great influence on Johan. After his initial disappointment that his son did not want to work for him in the business, he later became proud of him and his two daughters who both obtained a teaching diploma.
In 1924 Mekkink obtained the LO certificate and in 1929 the MO certificate. In the same year he completed his final examinations at the secondary school for applied arts 'Kunstpraktijk' in Arnhem, now the Academy of Visual Arts. He received painting lessons from the then director of this institute, the painter GJ van Lerven. In addition to being a portrait and still life painter, Mekkink also specialized in the 'monumental' direction under the guidance of the glass painter Schilling. Over the years he executed various mosaics and stained glass windows, including in churches in Velp, Spaarndam, Hillegersberg, Zevenaar, Veenendaal, Zetten and Silvolde.
At 'Art Exercise' he met the painter Dick Ket (1902-1940). His friendship with Ket continued until his death. Johan felt a kinship with Ket because, like himself, he paid special attention to small still lifes. Mekkink was twenty-six when Ket drew a portrait of him, which is now in the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem. Ket noted: “And he is so austere, so austere, he demands nothing for himself. He is a vegetarian, he does not drink more than one glass of wine, afraid that he would not be able to control himself. A perfectionist, in everything, including as a person, and very, very dutiful.” A fellow student of Mekkink, Leo Braat, draftsman and sculptor, also made a drawing of Johan in the same period and a few years later a head of him in bronze, which can be seen in the museum in Arnhem. Mekkink never made a decent living from painting and to remain independent he had to look for a job. He found one as a teacher of hand and decorative painting for ten hours a week at the Nijverheidsavondschool in Zutphen. He did that work from 1931 to 1939. After that, until 1952, Mekkink tried to stand on his own two feet as much as possible, but he was unable to do so. When the then director AJ de Lorm of the Arnhem Municipal Museum offered him a full-time job as a scientific assistant at the museum, he accepted the position. He found satisfaction in this work, although it limited his production as a painter. This was difficult for him, but the fear of poverty that was sharply remembered from his youth prevented him from giving up this job. Mekkink was a child of his time. Growing up in an environment where providing for a living was considered the main task, his hopes and desires for prosperity and luxury came last. Despite this, the position in the museum gave him the security that he could not get as a free artist. He became financially independent, which allowed him to put aside his childhood frustration. From 1954 to 1967, Johan Mekkink was deputy director and from 1967 to 1969 director of the Gemeentemuseum. When he retired he could continue his life as a free artist, but now without financial worries. On the day of his farewell, he already received the necessary assignments for portraits. He and his wife traveled to Italy and Germany to draw and paint. Although this did not mean an innovation in his work, it did mean a broadening of his view. After his wife died in a traffic accident in 1984, many of Johan Mekkink's last years were lonely and sad.
Mekkink is sometimes classified as one of the magical realists. He admired them and later in his museum policy he exhibited and purchased their works. The objective of this policy was to purchase Gelderland and contemporary work. In contrast to De Lorm, who was an arts and crafts man, Mekkink, as a Geldersman, had a strong bond with Gelderland painters. Both his own work and that of Dick Ket formed the starting point for expanding the collection of magical realists. During the period that he was director, he was able to implement a purchasing and exhibition policy as a result of which the museum now has the most important collection of magical realists in our country. He himself had an understandable fear of being classified and cataloged as such and therefore losing his identity. When he left the museum on August 31, 1970, he said: “If I have to be classified somewhere, it would be traditional Dutch painting, which for so many centuries has had the tradition of relatively fine painting, of fine brushwork, of a technical cool painting that has a long shelf life and is carefully brushed in fine strokes and colors.” When a painting of his with the title 'Still life with flute' was purchased in 1934 by the then director Van Erven Dorens for an amount of 225 guilders, Mekkink was very satisfied with it, because his annual salary at the Industrial School in Zutphen was 229 guilders. and 44 cents! This purchase was a recognition that meant a lot to him. Almost forty years later, in 1973, his successor Pierre Janssen bought a painting with the same motif for the museum for ƒ 3,500. These purchase amounts illustrate the development of Mekkink's appreciation. From a still life painter with a fairly busy composition in the beginning, he had become the painter of a more simplified design in later years. According to Mekkink, painting a still life was not at all easy, because the objects have to tolerate each other and he wanted to know them inside and out and be familiar with them.
Mekkink's still lifes, portraits and landscapes are of modest size and executed in a fine realistic technique. Initially, his still lifes showed influences from the work of Dick Ket. Ultimately, however, Mekkink arrived at a very personal style with portraiture as a specialism. The figures are often depicted frontally, with sharp color contrasts and penetrating eyes. He treated fabric and materials with great care. At the end of the 1930s, Mekkink made many portraits, including a double portrait of his parents. He portrayed his model with the background, landscape, interior or attributes of the work or function that the sitter fulfilled. A good example is a portrait of the Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy, Mr. AM Baron de Vos van Steenwijk, from 1971. A official portrait with the uniform as a status symbol full of awards.
Mekkink had a harmonious palette, his landscapes are spacious, the sky above is incredibly wide and the light is spread in large areas with lots of dark shadow in gray, green and blue colors. Red hardly appears in his paintings. In his still lifes, his preference for wood is expressed through images of shelves, a table and an open drawer. Mekkink was a member of the national associations: the 'Independents' (1933/1934) and 'De Brug' (1935/1942), both in Amsterdam. He was also a member of the 'Haagse Kunstkring'. He himself was secretary of the Society 'Artibus Sacrum', which organized exhibitions of contemporary art in Arnhem in the Korenbeurs building. After the aforementioned director De Lorm recruited him as a scientific assistant in 1952, this association was transformed into the 'Association of Friends of the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem' and Mekkink became secretary. Between 1933 and 1953 he took part in numerous group exhibitions of contemporary Dutch art in the Netherlands and England, including in Amsterdam and Amersfoort, Hull, Leicester, Norwich and Petersborough. One-man exhibitions took place in 1941 in Arnhem, in 1958 in Utrecht at the Utrechtse Kring Foundation and again in 1970 in Arnhem upon his retirement as director of the Gemeentemuseum. This last exhibition was a retrospective of seventy-one paintings, portraits and drawings made between 1927 and 1969. At his farewell reception, Mekkink said: “Although I have always served the museum with pleasure, I have always felt like a painter in my heart.”
At an auction in 2000 at Sotheby's where modern and contemporary paintings were auctioned by, among others, Charley Toorop, Pyke Koch, Raoul Hynckes and Wim Schuhmacher, a still life with vegetables by Mekkink from 1939 was offered for a price between 12,000 and 15,000 guilders. This shows the growing appreciation for his work. The Frisia Museum in Spanbroek (North Holland) houses a unique collection of paintings and drawings by the artists who defined the face of Dutch painting in the 1930s, the magical realists. The museum also shows works by other realistic Dutch artists of the 20th century, such as Edgar Fernhout, Jan Mankes and Johan Mekkink. In 2003 there was an exhibition there under the title 'Artists around Ket', including paintings and self-portraits by Mekkink, where the beautiful wooden frames around his weeks were particularly striking. At the end of 2003 there was another exhibition in Spanbroek called 'Magical realism in context', which was expanded with work by Dutch contemporaries who painted in a realistic style in the period 1915-1950 without adding the 'magical', but with a lot of attention to detail and technique. The announcement states: “The room alone where the tranquil poetic work of Jan Mankes, who died young, is combined with that of his admirer Johan Mekkink is worth the trip.”
| Condition | |||||||||
| Condition | Good | ||||||||
| Shipment | |||||||||
| Pick up | The work can be picked up on location. As a buyer you must bring your own packaging materials. The location is: Purmerend, The Netherlands | ||||||||
| Shipment | Parcel post | ||||||||
| Price | > 10KG or bigger than 1.00 x 0.50 meter
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| Guarantee | |||||||||
| Guarantee | By putting the item up for auction, I agree with the Terms of Guarantee as they are applicable at Kunstveiling regarding the accuracy of the description of the item | ||||||||
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