EDITH CAMPENDONK-VAN LECKWIJCK (1898-1987)
In 1914 the van Leckwijck family fled from Antwerp to The Hague where Edith joined the Belgian School voor Huishoudelijke Kunst under Jules Schmalzigaug, who was her teacher for many years.
In 1917, the year of his death she went back to Antwerp. Her work from that period was much influenced by the colourful works of the neo-impressionists James Ensor and Van Gogh. Around 1925 she became acquainted with Floris Jespers and she started under his influence to experiment with paintings on glass (verre églomisé). She developed a natural, almost primitive style so significant in Flemish expressionism. In 1929 she met Heinrich Campendonk and Wassily Kandinsky at the exhibition Kunst van Heden in Antwerpen. Campendonk was a member of the Munich artist group Der blaue Reiter but had been forced by the Nazi-regime to leave Germany and settle in Amsterdam where he became professor at the Rijks Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten. In 1935 Edith and Heinrich married and from that moment untill the death of her husband in 1957, she did not work as an artist.
After 1962 when a glass painting of hers was exhibited in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz she resumed her work. In her studio in Oostende she created many paintings and pastels of landscapes and fairylike scenes. Her work has, as professor H. Jaffé stated "a poetic, often gentle fantasy of people and nature, with a tranquil, almost child-like serenity which is expressed especially in her palet: the spectrum of colours which is restricted in most of her works to just one principle colour, which is then however accompanied by contrasting colours, as though they were accompanying voices. Thus Edith van Leckwijck's paintings obtain a transparent lustre, a radiance which entirely reflects her sense of living: the joy for all things she sees or dreams about behind closed eyelids. And this joy springs forth from the fact that everyting she sees seems like a new wonderous appearance, not yet worn by routine. It is this feeling for the wonderous freshness and virgin quality of her subjectmatter that binds her old and her new work together without any break. It is also this charteristic which forms the link between her work and that of Campendonk: the simplicity - like a folksong or a fairytale - the simplicity of a world which has remained whole, has been subject and goal of both painter's oeuvre, grown independently"(Prof.Dr. H.L.C. Jaffé, Exhibition Catalogue Heinrich Campendonk - Edith van Leckwijck, Galerie Borzo, Den Bosch, 1976, p. 8-9).
Edith van Leckwijck (1899-1987)
Details
Edith van Leckwijck (1899-1987)
Méditerané
signed lower right E. van Leckwijck, and dated 1930 and inscribed with title on the stretcher, oil on canvas
46 x 80 cm
Méditerané
signed lower right E. van Leckwijck, and dated 1930 and inscribed with title on the stretcher, oil on canvas
46 x 80 cm