Nicolaas Wijnberg - a very nice colour etching "Lapwing Egg", made in a very small edition (12) - Sold

• Artist: Nico(laas) Wijnberg (1918-2006)
• Illustration: lapwing egg in nest
• Sheet size: 27 x 20 cm image size 12 x 12 cm
• Signed: in pencil
• Numbered: 3/12
• Date: 1996
• Condition: in very good condition

Nicolaas Wijnberg was a Dutch artist and choreographer. He was a lithographer, like his father, but also created paintings, posters, stage sets, drawings, illustrations, and bookbinding designs. He also engaged in sculpting.
Part of the interior of the SHV headquarters in Utrecht with a floor mosaic by Wijnberg. Wijnberg was trained at the Graphic School in Amsterdam, where he received drawing lessons from Jos Rovers, and at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in the same city. As a painter, he was self-taught.
Wijnberg was a very active man who occupied himself with numerous artistic and related matters. His paintings were exhibited for the first time in 1942. After having been in hiding during the final years of the Second World War, he founded the world's first youth ballet group in 1945, together with Hans Snoek and Hans van Norden: the famous Scapino Ballet. With Van Norden and Theo Kurpershoek, he also founded the painters' association De Realisten in the late 1940s, a modern-figurative group that opposed the abstract art of Cobra and Vrije Beelden. His artistic expressions were exhibited both domestically and abroad. In 1952, he was a co-founder of the Association of Practitioners of Monumental Arts.
Wijnberg illustrated and/or provided cover artwork for countless poetry collections and novels. He began doing so in 1943, by decorating the clandestinely published novella Nymphale by A. van Pelt with drawings and vignettes. Furthermore, he designed covers for the books of W.F. Hermans, some under the pseudonym Montevino. Wijnberg also gave a face to the literary series De Witte Olifant published by GA van Oorschot.
In addition to his work as an artist, Wijnberg was the visual arts editor of the literary magazine Tirade from 1958, ran an art dealership from 1965 to 1970, and later held the first professorship in scenography at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. He also received honors; in 2000, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. Nicolaas Wijnberg passed away at the age of 87 in the Rosa Spier House in Laren, where he had already been residing for several years.