Harry van Kuyk (

Zevenaar Zevenaar () is a municipality and a city in the Gelderland province, in the eastern Netherlands near the border with Germany. Population centres *Angerlo *Babberich *Giesbeek *Lathum *Ooy *Oud-Zevenaar *Zevenaar History The earliest signs of h ...

, 2 March 1929 –

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

, 7 May 2008) was a Dutch

graphic artist A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, p ...

visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

and writer. In 1969 he developed a new technique for the graphic arts, the printed relief or "relief print", a print with an extreme relief (subsequently coining a new Dutch term: ''reliëfdruk'').

Early life

In his teens, van Kuyk took up an apprenticeship at a small printer's in his hometown. It typified his enduring passion for graphic techniques and printing. He was trained at the Grafische School in Amsterdam (Amsterdam School of Printing and Graphics). Subsequently, he worked as a manual typesetter and a foreman at Boom-Ruygrok and

Joh. Enschedé Royal Joh. Enschedé () is a Printer (publisher), printer of security documents, Postage stamp, stamps and banknotes based in Haarlem, Netherlands. Joh. Enschedé specialises in print, media and security. The company hosted the Museum Enschedé un ...

and as a graphic designer and a lay-out editor at the Nijmegen magazine division of the newspaper ''

De Gelderlander ''De Gelderlander'' (founded 1848) is a Dutch daily newspaper focused on Gelderland and immediate surroundings. It is published in Nijmegen by the Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belg ...

''. Meanwhile, he drew, painted and photographed, produced graphic art at a small scale, and mastered graphic design. In his spare time he carried out artistic and commercial designs commissioned by companies, the local government and private collectors.

Graphics and printing career

In 1965, he became an independent graphic designer and set up a studio in

Bemmel Bemmel is a town in the eastern Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. It is located in the Betuwe region, and falls under the municipality of Lingewaard. The town is situated between the major cities of Arnhem and Nijmegen, and is bordered b ...

. He participated in regional exhibitions with figurative graphic art and drawings, and made contacts with painters, sculptors and graphic artists like Theo Elfrink,

Klaas Gubbels Klaas Gubbels (born 1934) is a Dutch painter and sculptor with a special love of coffeepots. Biography He was born in Rotterdam and in 1954 he became assistant to Wally Elenbaas and Louis van Roode.Ad Dekkers and -artist Jan Schoonhoven. "The most obvious interpretation of the Harry van Kuyk sheets relates them to Nul", the art critic Lambert Tegenbosch wrote in 1972. "There is the same preference of white. Often there is some form of serial production. There is the picturesque definition of geometry. There is an element of mystery evoked by emptiness." In the early 1970s, artists like Schoonhoven and Shlomo Koren created their own embossed versions of white, geometric series. In 1971, van Kuyk, supported by substantial state financial funding, built his large dedicated ''reliëfdruk'' press,

Aldus Manutius Aldus Pius Manutius (; it, Aldo Pio Manuzio; 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preserv ...

. He used it to print large size, coherent series covering specific themes: geometry, typography, the golden section. He organized the printed reliefs in clamshell boxes, portfolios, wooden boxes and artist's books like ''Aldus Manutius'' (1971), ''Variaties op de Sectio Aurea'' (1972), ''Groot Abecedarium'' (1973), ''Tangram'' (1975) and ''Landschap'' (1980). He provided the editions with text booklets or sheets of text containing introductions and essays by art connoisseurs and journalists (Lambert Tegenbosch, G.W. Ovink, Joop Eilander, Wim Wennekes) or with poetry (by Hans Sternsdorff – also known as Hans Ruf jr. – and Hans Bouma). In addition, he produced numerous individual printed reliefs with geometric, lyrical-abstract and figurative shapes. The editions were small: seven, ten or twenty copies and, very occasionally, sixty. The production was quite time consuming. On his own initiative, he executed a number of his geometric printed reliefs in large white wall reliefs in wood (1973, 1975). Over one hundred exhibitions at home and abroad followed (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London, New York). A number of sales exhibitions were completely sold out within only a few weeks. National and international museums acquired his work. The ''Groot Abecedarium'' was awarded Silver at the Third International Graphic Arts Biennial in Frechen, West Germany, in 1974. He moved his studio to Nijmegen. In 1980-1981, he was the contemporary arts guest reviewer for ''De Gelderlander'' newspaper. After a 5-month journey across Africa (1982-1983) he settled in Ooij. His production decreased, as well as the number of his exhibitions. However, new ''reliëfdruk'' editions and artist's books appeared, including ''Bodoni Initiales'' (1993), ''Erografica'' (1995) and ''Novanu'' (2006). He produced large, minimalist white wall reliefs in acrylic or wood commissioned by, amongst others, the municipality of Zevenaar for its town hall (1985). From the 1990s onwards, he devoted himself to the more classical graphic art forms such as

drypoint Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically ident ...

(nudes), and to drawings,

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache h ...

s and

pastel A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those use ...

s (nudes, landscapes). He wrote essays and poetry for his artist publications. He published a dozen collections of stories, travel stories and aphorisms. In 2007, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau. He died one year later in Nijmegen.

Relief print: printed relief

A printed relief (''reliëfdruk'') by Van Kuyk is often mistaken for an extreme type of blind embossing. However, this is incorrect as the techniques differ. Embossing is a print without the use of ink with some relief (up to a few millimetres), produced on a platen press (for

relief printing Relief printing is a family of printing methods where a printing block, plate or matrix, which has had ink applied to its non-recessed surface, is brought into contact with paper. The non-recessed surface will leave ink on the paper, whereas t ...

) or an etching press (for

gravure Rotogravure (or gravure for short) is a type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a cylinder because, like offset printing and flexography, it ...

or intaglio printing). In a platen press, two platens are pressed against each other in one blow and with force, so as to have the template create a relief in the paper. In an etching press the template and the paper are fed simultaneously under a cylinder horizontally and smoothly, so as to have the template press the relief into the paper. A printed relief or ‘''reliëfdruk''’ is a print (without the use of ink) with an extreme relief (5 to 20 millimetres), produced on a dedicated ''reliëfdruk'' press (special embossing press) by means of a mould or die and counter-die (felt mats). A printed relief by van Kuyk combines relief and intaglio or gravure printing: the relief sits both in and on the paper. Van Kuyk's special embossing press operates vertically: the print mould or die (manually composed with elements of zinc, steel or aluminum), a sheet of moist, thick, long-fibred paper together with a set of felt mats are stacked between two plates (stamps). Under high, hydraulic pressure (up to 60 tons), with constant heat (up to 70 °C), over one to two hours, an image with an extreme relief is formed. The ''reliëfdruk'' mould is meticulously constructed with smooth raised (convex) and recessed (concave) segments so as avoid tearing the print paper. A ''reliëfdruk'' or printed relief is the outcome of a delicate balance between mould, choice of paper, pressure, temperature and time. The process designed by van Kuyk does not derive from embossing, but from

stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...

. In its modern version stereotype was a commonly used early 20th century production technique in the commercial printing trade. Stereotype (stereos = solid; typos = stamp, letter) is the method in which a well-defined mirror image copy of a page of lead type is pressed into special paper board under vertical, hydraulic pressure in a heated embossing press.M.G. Fischer, "Stereotypie, galvanostegie, galvanoplastiek, rubber-, semperit- en plastic-cliché's" in A.H.G. Blankensteijn (ed.), ''Reproductie-technieken. Algrafische serie nr. 3'', Mijdrecht (Stichting Graphilec) 1949 The paper board print mould (die) is subsequently cast in lead which results in a new printable page ("stype" in printers' jargon) identical to the original lead type. In this way exact replicas of the same page can be used simultaneously on a number of presses. This in turn facilitates high volume printing in a short time frame – a profitable way of printing newspapers, magazines and bestselling books. Around 1960, stereotype vanished due to the rise of offset printing; offset uses photography as a reproduction technique and made lead type obsolete. Due to his years of experience in large commercial printing companies, van Kuyk knew the stereotype technique inside out. As a pioneer he translated the technique to the graphic arts in 1969. In the 1970s, various artists (Klaus van de Locht, Torkel Dahlstedt) mastered the process in his studio, at the press. However, whereas embossing and other graphic art with relief maintained their popularity, it is rare to find prints with an extreme relief (''reliëfdruk''), due to the specialized skills required.

Own work

Graphic works: editions and artist's books

*''Aldus Manutius'', 1971 (printed reliefs in wooden box) *''Variaties op de Sectio Aurea'', 1972 (printed reliefs in clamshell box) *''Groot Abecedarium'', 1973 (printed reliefs and screen prints in two clamshell boxes and portfolio, all in wooden box) *''Tangram'', 1975 (printed reliefs and screen prints in clamshell box) *''Grafinu'', 1976 (screen prints in portfolio) *''Landschap'', 1980 (printed reliefs in artist's book) *''Cijfers'', 1988 (printed reliefs in artist's book) *''Bodoni Initiales'', 1993 (printed reliefs in three clamshell boxes in wooden box) *''Erografica'', 1995 (printed reliefs in artist's book) *''Nymph'', 1996 (screen prints in artist's book) *''Horizontaal. Liefdesbrieven aan een polder'', 1999 (offset in artist's book) *''Gratie'', 2001 (screen prints in cardboard wrapper) *''Novanu'', 2006 (gridless litho in artist's book)

Commissioned monumental art

* Linoleum wall inlay, 1966, paint mill Mechelen-aan-de-Maas (entrance, 210 x 420 cm, location unknown) * Linoleum wall inlay, 1967, Twickel College Delden (stairwell, 120 x 285 cm) * Acrylic wall relief, 1985, town hall of Zevenaar (wedding hall, 82 x 640 cm, in 2016 relocated to the entrance of the new town hall) * Wooden wall relief, 1988, Economische School ’s-Hertogenbosch (auditorium, 140 x 2400 cm, in 1997 dismantled and destroyed) * Education monument in granite, 1991, Pettelaarpark ’s-Hertogenbosch (480 x 500 x 75 cm) * Three wooden wall reliefs, 1998, Bouwbeurs Breda (114 x 70 x 6 cm each) * Wall panorama in silk screen on steel and wood, 2001, former Rabobank Beek-Ubbergen (entrance, 80 x 1750 x 15 cm)

Books

*''Gisteren. Legaat van vierentwintig uur'', 1990 (stories) *''Kerstmisser'', 1996 (novella) *''Solo'', 1998 (columns) *''Kunstenaarsgoed'', 2002 (aphorisms) *''Kerstmis in Lomé'', 2004-2005 (novella) *''Re-Genesis'', 2007 (essay)

In public collections

*Rijksmuseum Print Collection, Amsterdam *Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam *Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam *Art Museum, The Hague *Museum Meermanno , House of Books, The Hague *Royal Library, The Hague *Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam *Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem *Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen *Centraal Museum, Utrecht *Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar *Cultural Heritage Agency (Ministry of Education, Culture, Science), Rijswijk / Amersfoort *Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa *University Gallery, University of Florida, Gainesville, United States

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuyk, Harry Van Dutch graphic artists Dutch printmakers Dutch graphic designers 1929 births 2008 deaths