Lot 30: PYKE KOCH (1901-1991)

SIGNED AND DATED (MAKER'S MARKS)
signed and dated ´59

18 by 35,5 cm.

oil on canvas

Saint Paul, Minnesota, The Saint Paul Gallery and School of Art, travelling exhibition to Pensacola, Madison and Minneapolis, Paintings by Pyke Koch, 1960, no. 11

J.H.M. van der Marck, Neo- Realisme in de Nederlandse schilderkunst, Amsterdam 1960, p. 10

C. Blotkamp, Pyke Koch, Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers 1972, no. 68, p. 173, illustrated

L. van Tilborgh, Freudian motifs in the oeuvre of Pyke Koch, Simiolus 15, 1985, pp. 147, 149-150

C. Blotkamp, Achtergronden van het vroege werk van Pyke Koch, Keuzen, beschouwingen over Nederlandse kunstenaars, Utrecht 1985, pp. 23-24

B. Kempers, De wonderboy van Pyke Koch. Contorsionistes, travestieten en andere maskerades, Jong Holland 9, 1992, p. 18

'Wij zijn - als menschen - in de macht van een voorstelling.' ( We are -as human beings - in thrall to an idea, an image). This quotation concerning a note of Pyke Koch written in 1985. The power of an idea, an image reads as a statement about what it meant to him to be an artist. Koch was obsessed by the images formed in his mind. His paintings were for him means to materialise the images that haunted him, means to free himself of the images that obsessed him. He had the desire to express himself 'on the human psyche' as his biographer, Carel Blotkamp, put it.( Blotkamp, Pyke Koch, Amsterdam 1972, p. 46).

After the war Koch, Willink and Hynckes got the label 'Magisch Realisten' (Magic Realists). Magic here means that the secret is hidden behind the 'realistic' represention. Often his work has an erotic character, not overtly but rather suggestive.

Just as the content of his work has a complex personal internal structure, the paintings self consisting of many layers. His precision technique made it impossible for him to finish a work in a short time. Making a painting often took him a half year or even more.

His Rustende slaapwandelaarster I (Resting Sleepwalker I) is a fine example of Koch's tendency to perfection, both in tecnique as in personal expression. After this painting Koch would make several versions about the same theme. With these paintings Koch tried to depict his - problemic - feelings towards women. In restrained colours, he painted a sleeping woman, surrounded by numerous objects with erotic connotations: a candle, a sewing machine, a pin-cushion and a worm. The spent matches strewn on the ground show a vain attempt to light the candle. The image of the erotically unattainable woman.