Belgian Painter Drypoint Engraving The Infirm Signed By The Hand Of Nicolas Eekman

Engraving on paper 30 cm x 26 cm excluding margin, 51 cm x 39 cm signed in pencil on paper by the artist Nicolas Eekman lower right and numbered with the stamp lower left 28/50 representing cripples in the Flemish style. sold with invoice-certificate. Very good condition.

Nicolas Eekman was born in Brussels, in the house where Victor Hugo, then in exile, began to write Les Misérables. He is the son of Thomas Adam Eekman, born in Vlissingen and Ibeltje van den Berg, born in Gouda. Nicolas’s older sister, named Kato Ibeltje Eekman, born in Brussels in 1882, married the Dutch protestant pastor Annee Rinzes de Jong in Brussels in 1910.
At the age of 18, he gave his first conference in Brussels devoted to «Van Gogh, this unknown», a painter who, in 1907, was still largely unknown to the general public. In 1912, he visits the first exhibition of Vincent van Gogh in Cologne, an experience that will be decisive.
After graduating as an architect from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, he was invited by his friend pastor Bart de Ligt to stay during the First World War at the presbytery of Nuenen, in the Netherlands. Thirty years ago, the van Gogh family lived there; Vincent created Les mangeurs de pommes de terre. Until the end of the war, exhibitions multiplied in the country and Eekman was the object of numerous acquisitions by major Dutch museums and collectors, including Hélène and Anton Kröller-Müller.
In 1921, Eekman moved to Paris and continued to exhibit in France and abroad. He was a frequent visitor to Dutch and Belgian artists living in Paris, such as Fred Klein, Piet Mondrian, César Domela, Georges Vantongerloo and Frans Masereel. He befriends the gallery owner Jeanne Bucher who will exhibit him in 1928 with Mondrian. This is the only time that Mondrian will exhibit his paintings in a gallery in Paris. These two men, who the vision of art separates, Mondrian, promoter of abstract art and Eekman, violently opposed, will remain linked by an unfailing friendship throughout their lives.
In the 1930s, Eekman regularly exhibited at group exhibitions, notably in the US, and his solo shows were held throughout Europe.