Harry van Kruiningen - Oil on canvas: The bat women - 1988 (nice frame, heavily discounted!)

Oil on canvas by Harry van Kruiningen. Title: The Bat Women. Year: 1988. Dimensions incl. frame: H83 x W93cm. Dimensions: H60.5 x W71cm. The work is signed by the artist at the bottom right. The authenticity of this work is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.

You can also find this work in the supplement to the catalog raisonné on this artist's website. See: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HwnweuvhVD41Wl79y9tnwnekBkXT3QS-/view

Frames: Damage to frames is not described. If a work is framed behind glass and the glass is broken, this will be stated. Reflection may be visible in photos of framed works.

Shipping/collection:

When purchased, the work can be picked up in 's-Gravenzande (near The Hague (Scheveningen), Rotterdam and Delft and 5 minutes from the beach). The collection period, if paid in advance, is very long, in other words 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 via an Art Courier (Swift).

Biography Harry van Kruiningen (1906 - 1996)

Harry van Kruiningen was born in 1906 in Hansweert, Kruiningen municipality in Zeeland, as Henri Adelbert Janssen and died in 1996 in Laren in the Rosa Spierhuis. He was extremely versatile: painter, graphic artist, ceramist, draftsman, author and illustrator of seven children's books, filmmaker and monumental artist. But he achieved the most fame with his etchings. His graphic work can be characterized as abstract figurative, representations based on real forms.

Embrio, 1947 Color lithograph on paper 20.5 x 17 cm collection Museum Boijmans van Beuningen

He knew from an early age that he wanted to become a painter. Due to circumstances, he was only able to attend training at the age of 21. He started out as a painter of still lifes, cityscapes and landscapes in the style of the New Objectivity, characterized by realism and social commitment. Because Van Kruiningen was very socially involved. Before the Second World War he was active in the CPN. There he met his wife Rie Lieuwen, whom he married in 1929. From 1936 to July 1942 he participated in the artists' resistance and produced false identity cards (together with his friend and fellow artist Ger Gerrits) until he was arrested. He managed to get free and immediately went into hiding. After the war he was active in artists' unions and associations to achieve better working and living conditions for artists.

His work after the war became more abstract and colorful. From 1946 he introduced the color lithograph

life in his bibliophile series of 24 lithographs (Republic of Letters, 1947), Metamorphoses by Ovid

(1953), Akhenaten's Song of the Sun (1954), the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh (1955) and the Song of

Heer Halewijn (1956), all published by Le Canard.

Homosexual behavior of male Gametes of the algae Chlamydomonas, 1980 Color etching on paper 59.5 x 37.5 cm private collection © photo Ulco Janssen

At the age of 52 in 1958, Van Kruiningen became a teacher of graphic arts at the Arnhem Academy of Visual Arts (later ArtEZ). He wrote a textbook on the Technique of Graphic Art for his students. Together with his son Ulco, he produced a documentary film about the history and technique of graphic arts and a film about Rembrandt as an etcher.

Other well-known series of etchings inspired by literary sources are the twenty-two etchings with love letters of a Franctireur by Multatuli (1973), the horror stories of Edgar Alan Poe (1974), the Bible commentaries of the philosopher Spinoza, entitled Twenty-two etchings with sayings of a glasses grinder Spinoza (1975), and Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (etchings 1974).

He depicted the life of the common man in Amsterdam in the 14th to the 17th century in a series of 33 black and white etchings in the publication Leven en arbitrariness in Amsterdam (1970).

Nature and evolution were a great source of inspiration for him from 1977 to 1986. He became fascinated by the microworld of algae. Based on what he saw through the microscope, he made several series of color etchings about the origins of life (1977) and the origins of sexuality (1980) and finally a bibliophile edition: Volvox (1986).