Carel Willink.1900-1983
Self-Portrait

BIOGRAPHY

BORN 7 Mar 1900, Amsterdam - DIED 19 Oct 1983, Amsterdam
REAL NAME Willink, Albert Karel

Carel Willink first studied medicine for a while and then architecture in Delft. But he soon moved to the Hague, where he decided in 1919 that he wanted to be a painter. He studied in Berlin at the Hans Baluschek's painting school and started out with expressionist works. In 1923 he exhibited with the November Group at the Moabit Glaspalast.

In 1924 he returned to Amsterdam and called himself a futurist. In 1926 he married Mies van der Meulen, but she left him in 1928. In 1931 he travelled through Italy with his brother Jan. In 1931 he painted "Venus resting", with Wilma Jeuken (b.1905) as the model. In 1934 he married Wilma. In 1935 they moved to the Ruysdaelkade in Amsterdam, where Willink lived until his death.

During the 1940 he painted the portrait of a mr. Stakenburg and many portrait commissions would follow over the years. In 1947 he stayed in Paris and in 1951 he exhibitied at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. In 1960 Wilma died and he travelled to Rome to escape from his grief.

In 1969 he married Mathilda de Doelder, who was a society figure and had lived with him since 1963 (when she had been only 21 and he 60). He painted her naked three times. Willink started affairs with the mannequin Andrée Rupp (1974) and sculptress Sylvia Quiël (1975) and after Mathilde damaged the portrait he had done of Wilma in 1952 he threw her out. Willink immediately started living together with Quiël.

On May 19, 1977 Mathilde said on television that she would commit suicide if the separation wouldn't be settled in a a way that would be acceptable to her. When it became formal she received 135.000 guilders and started her own gallery in Amsterdam. She also started an affair with car and coke dealer Gerard Vittali, who found her death on her bed on October 25, 1977. She was naked, had a gun in her hand and a bullet in her head. It was unclear if she had been killed or had committed suicide. Willink and Quiël didn't attend the funeral.

Willink married Sylvia Quiël and she lived with him until his death in 1981.

The Magical Realism

Magical realism is a muddled and seemingly contradictory style of art and literature. Even for those acquainted with magical realism, it is hard to distinguish it from similar genres like realism, surrealism, fantasy, and science fiction. Magical realism is characterized by an acceptance of the unreal as a natural part of reality, thus creating imaginative and sometimes disturbing worlds. Although magical realist works often overlap with surrealism, critics make the distinction that while surrealism is Freudian and cerebral, magical realism is always concerned with external subjects.
Magical Realism in Visual Art
The term "magical realism" was coined in 1925 by German art historian Franz Roh to describe the burgeoning art movement known as Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"). This art depicted ordinary subjects with a mysterious and detached manner. The subjects painted by these magical realists were ordinary, but presented in a way that was far from boring. Although this movement died out in Germany, artists like Carel Willink, Paul Cadmus and George Tooker painted works of art that closely matched the aesthetics of Roh's magical realism. Like its German predecessors, these paintings depicted everyday objects with such rich detail that they had a magical quality.
Magical Realism in Literature
Literary magical realism refers to a genre of literature that depicts fantastical, supernatural, magical elements as ordinary. Likewise, the ordinary is often described as spectacular. Similar genres like science fiction and fantasy create speculative worlds in order accommodate the unreal; however, magical realist works use the real world as the setting and any unreal elements of the story exist naturally as if they have always been part of the world.
Magical realist works warp the fluidity of time; favoring a circular pattern of time instead of linear. Even while events proceed through a story, there is always the sense that what is happening will happen again or has already happened. There are also times when characters seem to experience different timelines simultaneously.
Magical realism is commonly associated with Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s. Authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia, Julio Cortazar of Argentina, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, and Alejo Carpentier of Cuba used magical realist techniques to propelled Latin American literature to the front stage of world literature. Contemporary Japanese literature is also known for its use of magical realism. Famed Japanese authors such as Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami, Yasunari Kawabata, and Kenzaburo Oe have experimented with magical realist techniques.
The genre of magical realism is adventurous and exciting. The artwork is rich with detail and surprisingly mysterious. The literature is often surreal and unconventional. While the literary movement petered out, the genre of magical realism contains some of the most accomplished authors and some of the most acclaimed books.