Biography
Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk (*1924 Amsterdam NL | †1994 Alkmaar NL), simply known as Lucebert, proved himself to be a multi-talented artist working in ceramics, painting and photography, while also becoming a national literary figure with his poetry. ‘Lucebert appeared as a comet’, wrote Dutch poet Gerrit Kouwenaar after discovering his work in 1948.
Lucebert was born in Amsterdam in 1924. From an early age he was interested in both literature and art, with a fascination for German romantic poetry, modernist painters such as Picasso, Klee and Ernst, and comic strips. The latter’s influence can be clearly seen in the caricatural and cartoon-like nature of his drawings and paintings. Lucebert started his studies at art school in 1938, but was forced to quit the program for financial reasons. He began to work as a housepainter in his father’s company. During the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi-Germany in the Second World War, he worked in an arms factory in Apollensdorf, Germany. His oeuvre is said to be a result of the emotional slough the war left him in: at the factory he had become captivated by the fascist regime and it has been said that he spent the rest of his life tortured.
Lucebert’s literary reputation was inextricably linked with the Dutch movement known as the ‘Vijftigers’ (named after the fifties); this group of poets rejected traditional poetic forms and represented a type of concrete poetry. He was introduced to the Dutch Experimental Group, an important predecessor of the CoBrA movement. It was during this period that Lubertus started calling himself Lucebert: a combination of the Italian ‘luce’ (light) and the Germanic ‘bert’ (bright, brilliant). This kind of associative variation on his first name, which both holds and changes meaning, would later prove to be illustrative of his poetry.
Lucebert is often considered to be a representative of the CoBrA movement, although in fact he was only indirectly involved in this group. In his work, Lucebert often worked with a ragged reality, as did many of the Cobra artists. Although in his early years Lucebert was influenced by CoBrA artists such as Karel Appel and Constant, he soon distanced himself from the group. He did take part in the legendary CoBrA exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949, but only as a poet. After a fight broke at the literary evening at the exhibition, Constant asked him to leave the group. Although his time with CoBrA was brief, it was highly significant for his career as a painter.
In 1953, he moved to the artists’ village of Bergen in the province of North Holland where he dedicated himself to his work as an artist. In the earliest phase of his development, clear references to Picasso, Surrealism and especially Dubuffet can still be seen in his work. His drawings and gouaches depict mythical beings similar to those that appeared in the paintings of some of his friends of the CoBrA group. A subtle poetic play of lines and colors were a constant feature in his work.
It was only from the late fifties, that Lucebert put himself forward decidedly as an artist and developed a style of his own. From 1957, he started to switch from ink, watercolor and gouache to oils and from paper to canvas. Around 1960 he incorporated CoBrA’s fanciful language in a more representational style. In an interview in 1992, Lucebert stated that he saw his works on paper from the first half of his career as preparation for this new phase: ‘by experimenting, searching, and following styles, I found my own handwriting. Only then was I ready to attack the medium of oil on canvas. I knew what I wanted.’
Although the quality of the works from 1957 onwards is very strong, the period of 1960-63 is considered to be the highlight of his career. It is also in this period that the dialogue between his two disciplines, poetry and painting, is the strongest. Compositionally his figures from this period are harmonious and well balanced, however their appearance was tempestuous, intense and ironic. The figures reflected an obsession with the human condition, a theme that he painted with fear and violence alongside a tenderness and humor. A similar contradiction can be seen in his process. The spontaneity of the CoBrA language that Lucebert used, conflicted with his method of thorough consideration. His process was the result of many intensive sessions of working and reworking the canvas. He applied the paint in various manners, carving, dripping, smearing, brushing, drawing and writing.
Lucebert saw his imagination as a tool to expand his imagery. In both his poems and his paintings, he found a great importance in the child’s imagination. His artistic process was lucid but open, leaving room for chance occurrences. Instead of pure psychic automatism, as we see with Surrealist like André Breton, Lucebert showed a more ‘impure’ encounter with reality, harnessing the irrational forces of the unconscious and the world of dreams to engage with life more fully. ‘Anything that crosses my mind I paint’, Lucebert explained in 1963.
During the sixties, his work was widely exhibited internationally at Documenta Kassel, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum, Kunsthalle Basel and Marlborough gallery in New York and London.
In the 1970s, his work became more controlled. The painter was fascinated by the human face. With merciless irony he translated the palette of people’s facial mimicry into powerful caricatures. In 1968, he was awarded the highest Dutch governmental prize for literature, the P.C. Hooft Prize. In 1974, he received the Dutch-Belgian Prize for Dutch literature. In 1986, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam purchased a collection of 873 of his paintings, drawings, and prints.
Lucebert passed away in Alkmaar in 1994. His works can be found in the collections of the Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle; CoBrA Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Municipal Museum, Schiedam; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and Museo Fundación Antonio Peréz, Spain.