Shifting skies, Willink’s clouds above the Rijksmuseum
17 April – 14 June 2015

Foam presents an exceptional and, until now, little-known theme in the voluminous oeuvre of the well-known Dutch painter Carel Willink. In the 1930s, he began to photograph the Amsterdam sky from his apartment and studio, overlooking the famous Rijksmuseum, to use as material for sketches. These clouded skies were hidden away for years in his archive of negatives managed by his widow Sylvia Willink-Quiël. There they stayed until last year when Willem van Zoetendaal, photography expert, book publisher and exhibition curator, dedicated a publication – with Willink-Quiël’s support – to this very specific work by Willink. This publication has also provided the inspiration for the Foam exhibition.

Carel Willink (1900-1983) 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 didn’t 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’ or dramatic skies in both the photos and the paintings.

This exhibition Shifting skies, Willink’s clouds above the Rijksmuseum has been made possible in cooperation with Sylvia Willink-Quiël and Willem van Zoetendaal. The exhibition consists of modern prints made from scanned negatives as well as original photos printed by Willink from the archives of Sylvia Willink-Quiël and from the collection of the Rijksmuseum.