Wim van Aken - Landschap met mensen en watervallen - Sold

Rare early work by WIm van Aken.; he was 16 when he made this!
Van Aken was born in Amsterdam and lived in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies until after the Second World War. As a prisoner in a Japanese camp, he used his brother's hair to make brushes. Back in the Netherlands he lived in Halfweg (Haarlemmerliede and Spaarnwoude) and after 1996 in Naarden. In 2014 he moved there from the Jan Steenstraat to a nursing home in Huizen.

In the sixties he made study trips to Italy, Spain, France and Great Britain. Van Aken was influenced by classical Greek antiquity and Roman culture. Van Aken worked a lot with watercolor and sepia and used etching techniques and lithography. Subjects were buildings, landscapes, female nudes and architectural elements. He painted figures in still lifes, cityscapes and interiors. He executed his impressionistic and abstract work in mosaics, portraits and paintings in oil on canvas. He usually signed 'W. from Aachen'.

At a young age he was inspired by old masters such as Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci. When he was thirteen years old, he was already making still lifes in the Renaissance style. From 1950-1952 he attended the Institute for Applied Arts Education in Amsterdam. He then attended the Gooi Academy in Hilversum. From 1955 to 1959 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. One of his teachers was Paul Citroen. From 1960-1962 he was taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Wim van Aken was a member of the Cultural Council of North Holland in IJmuiden and the Gooise Painters Association and the Association of Visual Artists Laren-Blaricum.

The work comes directly from his heirs and is 100% authentic.