Arie Zonneveld (1905-1941)

Gerrie in the Netherlands has kindly offered us a posting on one of his favourite Dutch artists and someone who is rarely known outside of Holland. I am really so delighted, and he has also shared some of the works of the artist with us also. I have probably not done his work justice, and I have chosen the images that spoke to me aesthetically, however, a massive thank you to Gerrie.

Born in 1905, and growing up during World War I, he entered a government office job. Not happy with the job, he took evening classes at art school, dreaming of becoming a teacher of arts and drawing. He never finished it. Not satisfied with the rules and limited horizons which he felt were constricting and inflexible. He must have known his neighboring contemporary Ernst Rötteken (1882-1945) who left a similar impact on German middle-class interiors between the wars. Enjoying and displaying good and yet affordable was a high minded goal of many artists of this period. Zonneveld’s early flower prints show a great deal of similarity to the German aesthetic.

It is probable that he studied from the best selling books by Pedro de Lemos “Applied Art” and “the Art Teacher” (1920-1930).
His earliest serious attempts in printmaking was making illustrations for a Dutch 1928 edition of “Im Westen nichts neues” (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), by Erich Maria Remarque, (1898-1970). The haunting eye-witness report and analyses of the madness of war by a very sensitive and highly intelligent German teenage front-line soldier in the Flanders trenches in WW1 sold 1.2 million copies in the first year alone. It was translated in 45 languages, and for the Dutch publication, it could have catapulted Zonneveld to national recognition.

It wasn’t to be however. The edition was cancelled, and his work remained out of sight. However, in 1983, one of his prints was finally used for the cover of a new edition. It came forty years after his death, and was something of an homage but it was also a little late.
For the cover of the Dutch edition of Lettice Coopers, “the Ship of Truth” (1930) he crafted a dramatic woodblock print of a sailing boat tossed upon stormy seas, which gave immediate graphic punch and also proof of his artistic and woodcutting skills. He was invited to design the first Dutch Welfare-Postcards (1931) a set of 6 images.

Somewhere between 1931 and his untimely death in 1941 at just 35 years old, he made and sold his color woodblock prints. He died of appendicitis at a time when penicillin, although discovered in 1928, had not been available earlier than with the arrival of D-day soldiers in 1945. His widow and his three children, managed to survive World War II, as well as near starvation in the winter of 1944-45 by printing, signing and his old stock of woodblocks.

Arie Zonneveld combined a wood key-block with lino-blocks. His prints, once so familiar to almost every pre-1970 Dutch family fell out of fashion and like many talented artists, were mostly forgotten, thrown away; or dumped at local flea-markets. During his brief artistic and creative period some fifty woodcuts and linocuts remain. Some of the prints were and are of average quality but there are also some true gems. With time and a better educated public, there has been something of a renaissance in interest of Zonneveld’s works, mostly in the Netherlands. His works do come up in auctions and if you have an eye, a bargain can be had. I am sure you would agree with me, these are outstanding and beautifully rendered creations, I am also astonished about this remarkable artist whom I have never heard of. Once again a huge thank you to Gerrie for sharing these works with us, and his knowledge.