Dirkje Kuik - Litho: Voorstraat - 1989 - Sold

Lithograph by Dirkje Kuik. Title: Front Street. Year: 1989. Dimensions top: H42 x W50cm. Dimensions of the presentation: H31 x W42cm. The work is signed in the lower left corner in pencil by the artist. The authenticity of the work offered is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.

Upon purchase, the work can be picked up in 's-Gravenzande (near The Hague (Scheveningen), Rotterdam and Delft and 5 minutes from the beach). The term for collection, when paid in advance, is very long, ie the buyer can collect the work weeks or even months later and if possible combine it with a visit to one of the above-mentioned cities or the beach. The work can also be sent. Our shipping days are Tuesday and Thursday.

Dirkje, who lives and works in Utrecht, was born William Diederich Kuik. In 1977 Kuik started using the first name Dirkje and in 1979 Kuik had himself operated on in a hospital in London and since then has lived entirely as a woman. She wrote extensively about her operation, her experiences as a gender diaspora patient, as she called it and how she picked up her life after the operation, especially in Huishoudboekje with raisins.

Kuik studied for some time at the Rijksakademie of visual arts in Amsterdam, was an art critic for Het Parool and drew for Vrij Nederland. In 1960 Kuik founded the graphic company De Luis together with Joop Moesman and Henc van Maarseveen. Participating artists with divergent ideas alternated over the course of twenty years.


Portrait of William Diederich Kuik, 1963
As a graphic artist, illustrator and draftsman she focused on cityscapes, figure representations and portraits; she was also a writer and poet. She made her debut as a poet in 1969 with the collection 45 Poems, still under the name William D. Kuik. The work is seen as an important contribution to the Dutch neo-romantic movement. For Utrecht Notes from 1969 she received the Prose Prize from the City of Amsterdam. The 1974 serial The hero of the pot game, illustrated by Kuik himself, was awarded the Vijverberg Prize.

From 1958-1963 and from 1968-1972 she was a member of the society Kunstliefde, a Utrecht association of artists and art lovers, founded in 1807. Dirkje Kuik died in 2008 and was buried in a very private circle at the local Cemetery Soestbergen. After her death, an exhibition was set up at Kunstliefde on the Nobelstraat as a triptych, her visual work, a biographical overview of her life and visual work by contemporaries. In 2008, a museum in honor of her work[2], which has existed for about four years, was set up in her former home at Oudekamp 1 in Utrecht. Her artistic legacy is managed by the "Dirkje Kuik" foundation.