Pyke Koch

Diagnoses

Vocation

Traits

Dutch autodidact painter. With Carel Willink, he belonged to the most prominent magic realistic painters in the Netherlands. He was born in Beek, near Nijmegen, where his father was a family doctor. He was the youngest of four, having three elderly sisters. It was a musical family. Koch played the violin and was interested in music from Bach to gipsy music. As a student he played in a student gypsy band called "Tzigane" named after the rhapsody of Ravel (26 April 1924). He followed the Gymnasium in Nijmegen and a boarding school in Zeist, the Christelijk Jongensinternaat. Here he got the nickname "Pike" (Dutch: snoek). He changed it to Pyke, when he studied Law in Utrecht from 1920-1927. Via his eldest sister Minie, the spouse of one the first Dutch Freudian psychiatrists August Stärcke (12 August 1880 1PM , Amsterdam -20 September 1954, Zeist)), he came into contact with the paintress Charley Toorop. His sister Minie also gave him oil paint. Summer 1927 he decided to become a painter. Whilst his professor was on vacation, he could not finish his doctoral examination in Dutch Civil Right. He made instead his first painting "Dolores’ Ontbijt" (Dolores breakfast) of a woman he met in a cafeteria. He convinced her that he was a full-grown artist, whilst he never had made any painting before. But via Stärcke, he had became interested in Freudian dream theory. His art impressed other painters. Cor Postma introduced him to artists in Amsterdam. In 1928 he debuted in Amsterdam with success with only two paintings: "Dolores' ontbijt" and "Vrouw met grammofoon". In 1931 Rotterdam Museum Boymans van Beuningen bought his work "Schiettent", so that he could ask higher prices for his work. In 1934 he married Hedwig Maria (Heddy) de Geer (20 May 1905, Rotterdam -1 August 1988, Oudegin), the daughter of the CHU politician Dirk Jan de Geer. The of Walloon descent Protestant De Geer family belongs to the Swedish and Dutch nobility. The original Protestant arms dealer Louis de Geer (1587-1650) became rich by selling canons, that combated the Spanish Conquistadores of the emerging Dutch Republic. In the thirties Koch became very influenced by the work of the Early Renaissance painters Piero della Francesca and Andrea Mantegna. But he also became influenced by then propagated heroism of Italian and German fascism, when he travelled to Italy. Since 1937, he lived and worked in Utrecht. During the German occupation in WW2, he became a noted member of the Kulturkammer, exhibiting in Germany and designing Dutch postal stamps, this time using German ("Aryan") mythology. For this, and also because the even more abstract postwar "conceptional art" became popular, he fell after the end of the war into disgrace. But his perfectionism and autodidact craft still attracted the attention of art dealers and museum directors. After the war he became even more inspired by the dark side of the road and enjoyed the "dolce vita" films of Fellini, and painted like other Italian post war film masters the heroic coming up for their lifes of the forgotten outcasts of society, like prostitutes, circus artists and "Mutter Courage" like brave mothers. In the early 80-thies Koch was diagnosed with Alzheimer. In 1980 he retired as a painter and lived another 11 years with dementia in Huis Oudegein and Wassenaar. He died 27 October 1991 in Den Haag. Link to Wikipedia