Harry van Kuyk

From the 1990s onwards, he devoted himself to the more classical graphic art forms such as drypoint (nudes), and to drawings, gouaches and pastels (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.

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).

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.

In 1971, van Kuyk, supported by substantial state financial funding, built his large dedicated reliëfdruk press, Aldus Manutius. 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).

His white, geometric-abstract prints, characterized by light and shadow, were a great success from 1970 onwards. One is inclined to compare them with the white wall reliefs and objects by Ad Dekkers and Nul [nl]-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 1969, he managed to produce prints with an extreme relief (up to 20 millimetres) in special thick rag paper. Initially, he referred to them as "präge prints" (based on the German word for blind embossing), at that time a common term in modern graphic art. Given a number of essential technical differences he soon coined and permanently used the Dutch term reliëfdruk ("relief print", meaning print with extreme relief).

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.

In 1965, he became an independent graphic designer and set up a studio in Bemmel. 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, Rob Terwindt, Oscar Goedhart, Ed van Teeseling and with the artist-critic Maarten Beks.

The process designed by van Kuyk does not derive from embossing, but from stereotype. 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. 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.

Harry van Kuyk (Zevenaar, 2 March 1929 – Nijmegen, 7 May 2008) was a Dutch graphic artist, visual artist, graphic designer 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).