Lake Ontario Hall Wall Gallery, Allendale Campus
July 12 - December 13, 2024

Open During Building Hours.

Hendrik (Henk) Cornelis Krijger (19 November 1914—27 September 1979) was the son of Protestant missionaries. He was born and raised in the Dutch East Indies, a colony that did not gain independence until 1949 and is now known as Indonesia. As a teenager, Krijger was sent to the Netherlands for his education and began his artistic career before the Second World War. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he contributed to works under the pseudonym Lodewijk Brouwer to De Bezige Bij (The Busy Bee), an Amsterdam publishing house illegally founded in 1944 that actively supported the resistance. After the war, he continued to work in the book industry as a graphic designer and illustrator and developed a new typeface - Raffia Initials – recalling the flourish of Baroque typography. 

In 1969, Krijger, a deeply religious man, moved to Chicago, where he served as the lead artist of the Institute for Christian Art (ICA). Plagued with financial difficulties, the ICA failed two years later. Krijger made an ill-fated attempt to revive the arts organization, renamed Patmos Workshop and Gallery, in Toronto, Canada. Krijger became disenchanted with Patmos and in 1973, he returned to the Netherlands, where he died five years later. Nevertheless, his artistic contributions can be witnessed in the work of his colleagues in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands.

His art is difficult to categorize. Krijger worked with a variety of media, crossing back and forth between them, and his style was not uniform. Throughout his career, he produced drawings, paintings, prints, and sculptures, often experimenting with a mixture of found materials. Although Krijger’s artistry frequently seems to be placed at the threshold betwixt and between the real and the imaginative, it is not merely an extension of early twentieth-century Dutch Symbolism and Expressionism. His imagery is deeply shaped by his childhood experiences in Indonesia, his artistic training in the Netherlands, and by his personal struggles with the Christian faith that he could not leave.

In many ways, Krijger fought against aesthetic purity, preferring ambiguity and inclusion. While in Chicago, Krijger began to sign his works with “Senggih,” after the way his childhood friends mispronounced Henkje (“Little Hank”). This somewhat self-facing gesture marks his continual preoccupation with questions of cultural diversity and personal identity. His art is informed by the crossing of continents, themes, and artistic media.

This retrospective highlights gifts recently donated to the collection at Grand Valley State University, which holds the largest public collection of Henk Krijger’s work. For more information, please visit gvsu.edu/artgallery and to view more of his work, please visit our online collection of Henk Krijger.

Location

Lake Ontario Hall Wall Gallery
Lake Ontario Hall, Allendale Campus
4023 Calder Dr
Allendale, MI 49401

For directions and parking information visit www.gvsu.edu/maps.

Contact

For special accommodation, please call:
(616) 331-3638

For exhibition details and media inquires, please email:
Joel Zwart, Curator of Exhibitions
[email protected]

For learning and engagement opportunities, please email [email protected].