LUCEBERT (LUBERTUS JACOBUS SWAANSWIJK)
Amsterdam,(Netherlands) 1924 – Alkmaar (Netherlands), 1994  

He started drawing at an early age. In 1938, when he was assisting his father, who was a house-painter, he studied for six months at the Institute of Arts and Crafts in Amsterdam. After the war, when he was sentenced to hard labour and transferred to Germany, he managed to survive by means of his drawings, which he exhibited for the first time in 1948; at the same time he embarked on a period of intense production of poetry, which led him to take part in Reflex and the Dutch Experimental Group before  becoming a member of COBRA in 1949. He left this group after the Internationale tentoostelling van experimentele kunst, presented that year at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The influence of COBRA, and especially of Karel Appel, was clearly visible in his drawings, which were not unconnected with his interest in Surrealism, primitive art and children’s drawing. It was his activity as a poet, however, that marked his career during the fifties. From 1951 onwards he published a total of eight collections of poetry, with the result that the critics placed him at the head of the so-called Dutch “generation of the fifties”. In the late fifties he made a vigorous return to his activity as an artist, alternating drawing with work on canvas, which he presented for the first time at the Galerie Espace in Haarlem in 1958. His paintings were less aestheticist than those of his companions in COBRA, full of misshapen creatures that expressed existential anguish and tenderness at the same time; with this work he took part in Documenta 2 in Kassel in 1959. The following year he exhibited in Germany for the first time, at the Galerie Der Spiegel in Cologne. In 1963 he presented his work at the Marlborough in London and had his first retrospective, which took place at the Städtische Kunstgalerie in Bochum. In 1964 he was included in the Biennale di Venezia. He ended the decade with a major exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum. During the seventies he intensified his relationship with Spain, where he spent long periods, and he consolidated his reputation as a poet with the publication of five new collections of poetry before his death. After his first exhibition in Paris, at the Galerie Stadler in 1983, the Stedelijk acquired most of his work in 1985. During the last years of his life he began to experiment with ceramics, which he exhibited for the first time in Berlin in 1991. He died in Alkmaar (Netherlands) at the age of 69.