Lucebert

Dutch illustrator and the poet-painter of the Cobra and Fifties movement. Lucebert was the son of the house painter and waiter Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk (28 May 1902) and Johanna Kalf (1891), a barmaid. They married 14 October 1914 in Amsterdam and got three sons. The marriage was unhappy: there were financial problems and quarrels and when Lucebert was only 2 years old, his mother left the family. They divorced officially on 31 December 1927 in Amsterdam. After four difficult years, his father remarried on 12 June 1930 the Catholic Hendrika Johanna Wilsens (18 April 1892, Vught), an early widowed house keeper without children. Until age 13, Lucebert lived in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam, which had then a typical Labour neighbourhood with a mixed population, including poor immigrant Jews. He became at young age interested in alchemy. His father played on 24 November 1928 the role of Sint Nicolaas in Amsterdam, but there is little reason to believe that his youth was happy. He followed the ULO Trade school from 1936-39, where two teachers formed him: The teacher of German letters G.F.J.C. Bering stimulated his love for romantic poetry and letters. The other was the SDAP member and socialistic painter, lithographer and Concertgebouw clarinet player Johan van Hell (28 February 1889, Adam – 31 Dec 1952, Adam). Van Hell recognised his talent and gave him private lessons in painting. After the ULO (summer 1939), Lucebert had to work in his fathers house painting company. His talent for painting was rediscovered by a passenger, when he just made some painting on a wall. With a grant he was allowed to study at the "Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs" (art school) in Amsterdam. The director, the Bauhaus architect and designer Mart Stam (5 August 1899, Purmerend – 23 February 1986, Goldach), made him aware of Dada and surrealisms, but after four months of art study, his father abruptly ended it, as he had to work for bread to sustain the poor family. Lucebert had several clerk jobs as a teenager. But with his friends Johan van der Zant (the poet Hans Andreus) and Wim Kraaykamp, the elder brother of the actor Johnny Kraaykamp, he formed an artistic group, that wore their hair longer than usual. But there was also a war going on. In May 1943 he went semi-voluntarily for "Arbeitseinsatz" as a clerk in an explosives factory in Apollensdorf . He initially liked it: He wrote romantic poems, often visited the Medieval Luther city Wittenberg and the public library in Dessau. But when he was accused of sabotage, he ended up as a forced labourer in the factory and became ill. As he simulated severe illness, he was was allowed to go home (May 1944). In Amsterdam he went underground with his elder brother till the end of the war on Dutch Liberation on 5 May 1945. After the war Lucebert worked for a while for the Canadian troops. Later he started wandering, lodging with friends like Bert Schierbeek and became an autodidact artist. On 22 December 1947 Lucebert converted to Catholicism, together with his girl friend Corinne de Wit. He became religiously inspired, and made wall paintings for Franciscan monasteries. But the Franciscan nuns did not appreciate his kind of art, and later painted it white. Note that his first painting teacher had the name "Johan van Hell", and that his pen name "Lucebert" - that he first used on 5 September 1945 in a letter to the poet Hans Andreus - derives from the Latin word "luce" (light) and the German "Bert", m Read less