Carel Van Lier (1897-1945) Carel Van Lier (1897-1945)By Philippe Bourgoin Although the name Carel Van Lier and his “Kunstzaal” appear in numerous works about Dutch art between the wars, it took more than half a century for an exhibition and a book to be dedicated to him. Born in The Hague, he, his parents and his three sisters moved to Amsterdam, then subsequently to the suburb of Bussum, where his parents, Samuel (1868-1908) and Francisca (1869-1920), opened an antiques store and auction house in 1905. Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969), “Carel van Lier in the exhibition room on the first floor of his gallery”. Circa 1930. © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld. After his father’s death, Van Lier began to help his mother in the family business and acquired his training as a dealer there. In 1919, he married Catharina Van der Veen (1887-1945), ten years his senior. Passionately involved in Amsterdam’s artistic life, she was a favorite model of painter Jan Sluijters (1881-1957). Sluijters who was an avid collector of tribal art, as can be noted on some of his paintings on which objects are reproduced, such as the portrait he painted of Carel Van Lier in 1929. Upon the death of Van Lier’s mother, who committed suicide in a lake, the couple moved to Amsterdam and Van Lier became a buyer for the fashionable Metz & Co department store, where his wife was already working. “Kunstzaal Van Lier, 126 Rokin”, Amsterdam, before 1929. © Archives Carel Van Lier. Bas Van Lier. In 1921, Van Lier opened his own gallery at 51 Damrak, one of Amsterdam’s main thoroughfares, on the second floor above a foreign currency exchange office, where he became the first in the Netherlands to exhibit Asian art and ethnography, an opening hailed by the renowned painter and art critic Kasper Niehaus (1889-1974), in an article published in the daily De Telegraaf: “In Paris and Berlin, for example, art galleries offering Art Nègre have existed for a long time, but Amsterdam has never had activity of this kind until now. Mr. Van Lier certainly deserves the thanks of the citizens of Amstel for bringing this about [March 18, 1921].” Carel van Lier and his fiancée Elisabeth Van de Velde. Atelier Jacob, Merkelbach, 1924. �� Joods Cultureel Kwartier. Inv. F005688. But the adventure was short-lived. Van Lier moved to the artists’ village of Laren, not far from Amsterdam, where he occupied a space inside the famous Hamdorff Hotel, a popular meeting place for many artists. In 1924, he separated from his wife, Catharina Van der Veen, and remarried Elisabeth Magdalena Maria van de Velde (1903-1990). They had three children. A forerunner in a movement that encouraged artists and dealers alike to surround themselves with “primitive” works, he built up a collection that was made up of a wide range of objects. His passion for tribal and non-European art also inspired his friends and relations to take an interest in these fields. His collection soon became famous, and in 1927 the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam devoted an exhibition to him (Tentoonstelling Van oude Negerplastieken. Collectie Kunstzaal Van Lier, January 3 to 31). This was the first time that the Stedelijk Museum had given pride of place to works of this kind and presented them for their own artistic merit. The collection included some 150 pieces, mainly from West Africa, Indonesia and Melanesia. Niehaus wrote of it: “The collection of negro sculpture from the Kunstzaal Van Lier in Laren now being exhibited in three ground-floor spaces has been expanded considerably since it was last discussed here some years ago. So much so that, currently [...], it is one of the largest and best in our country [De Telegraaf, January 22, 1927]”. Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969), circa 1930, collage for an advertising postcard representing the diversity of works offered by the gallery. © Archives Carel Van Lier. Bas Van Lier. Building on the strength of the reputation he had gained with the Stedelijk Museum exhibition, he returned to Amsterdam and set up his new gallery, called Kunstzaal Van Lier, at 126 Rokin, named after the canal that runs alongside the thoroughfare. His business quickly attracted an international following, the Netherlands being an important financial center and Amsterdam having become a hub for numerous dealers and collectors. Masks and sculptures - Asian, Southeast Asian, African and Oceanic - were regularly exhibited alongside modern artworks. It is rarely mentioned that Van Lier also took an interest in Gothic sculpture and painting, some of it “naive”, from Indochina and Indonesia, for which he organized an Indonesische veertien dagen (Indonesian Fortnight) in 1948 in collaboration with the Indonesian commission of the ASVA (Algemene Studenten Vereniging Amsterdam). Jan Sluijters (1881–1957), Portrait of Carel Van Lier with a Leti figure, Indonesia. 1929. Oil on canvas. 85 x 55 cm. © Museum Arnhem. Inv. 2010.069. Van Lier was one of the few dealers who exhibited works by modern and avant-garde artists such as magical realists Wim Schuhmacher (1894-1986), Raoul Hynckes (1893-1973) and Carel Willink (1900-1983), neorealists such as Dick Ket (1902-1940), Edgar Fernhout (1912-1974) and Henri Van de Velde (1863-1957), and expressionists like Charley Toorop (1891-1955), Hendrik Chabot (1894-1946) and Jan Van Herwijnen (1889-1965). Every month, Van Lier presented a new exhibition of these artists’ works, as well as those of exiled German painters like George Grosz (1893-1959) and Max Beckmann (1884-1950), and of Parisians like Le Fauconnier (1881-1946), Moïse Kisling (1891-1953) and Foujita (1886-1968). These exhibitions were held on the ground floor or on the second floor of the building. Two small rooms, one above the other at the back of the house, were reserved for tribal art. The room on the ground floor was devoted to African art, while the room on the second floor was for Indonesian and Oceanic art. In the course of his travels, Van Lier met and established contact with collectors and colleagues including Henry Pareyn (1869-1928) in Antwerp, Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) in Berlin, and Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Charles Ratton (1895-1986), with whom he maintained close ties, and the Asian art dealer Lu Huan Wen, known as Ching Tsai Loo or C.T. Loo (1880-1957), in Paris. Harmen Meurs (1891-1964), Portrait of Carel van Lier (1897-1945) with a maternity figure from DRC and a Uli sculpture from New Ireland. 1928. Oil on canvas. 115 x 90 cm. © Private Collection. Van Lier became one of the main suppliers to the German and Swiss banker and collector Eduard von der Heydt (1882-1964), the famous Swiss collector Han Coray (1880-1974) and the German banker Georg Tillmann (1882-1941), who acquired 108 objects from Van Lier between 1933 and 1939, according to the Tropenmuseum archives. Homer Saint-Gaudens (1880-1958), director of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute, visited the gallery every year to keep abreast of developments in modern Dutch art. Despite its dominant position, the gallery’s business was far from profitable in the 1930s, when crisis and recession overtook the world’s economy. Maori Figure Poutokomanawa, New Zealand. H.: 50,5 cm. Ex-coll. Carel Van Lier. © Christie’s Paris, April 10, 2019, lot 63. In 1930, Van Lier was a contributor to a “Neger-nummer” (“Negro Issue”), a special issue of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer (No. 2759, April 19, p. 19), with an article devoted to African art titled Die Kunst der Negers, illustrated with drawings by Ro (Rosette Rachel) Kopuit (1880-1943). In January 1937, he exhibited fifty works from the Charles Ratton collection. Van Lier was also the first gallery owner in the Netherlands to present photography as an art form, with works by Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) in 1932 and 1934, and by Eva Besnyö (1910-2003) in 1933 and 1934. Blumenfeld produced a series of portraits of the gallery owner, as well as a collage for a postcard advertisement that publicized the diversity of works the gallery offered. Elema Eharo mask, Papuan Gulf, Papua New-Guinea. Beaten bark, wood and pigments. H.: 50,5 cm. Ex-coll. Carel Van Lier. © Christie’s Paris, April 10, 2019, lot 20. In 1940, when the German occupation of the Netherlands began, he benefited at first from a certain leniency because his wife was not Jewish. However, on July 8, 1942, under pressure from the occupying forces, his gallery came under the control of German administrators, and he was soon no longer able to continue to run his business. In April 1943, the security service discovered Van Lier’s name in the address book of Willem Arondeus (1894-1943), an artist and member of the Resistance who, along with sculptor Gerrit Van der Veen (1902-1944), curator of the Stedelijk Museum, Willem Sandberg (1897-1984), and several other companions, set fire to the Amsterdam civil registration office on March 27, with the aim of preventing the Nazis from identifying Jews for arrest. The German Sicherheitsdient (Security Forces) established that Van Lier had supported artists who had refused to sign up for the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer (Dutch Cultural Chamber), established by the Nazis. New Ireland figure, Bismarck Archipel. Wood, pigments and shell. H.: 77 cm. Ex-coll. Georg Tillmann, Carel van Lier. © Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. Inv. TM-1772-2390. Van Lier was arrested on April 7 and, after spending time in the Auschwitz and then Mauthausen concentration camps, died of exhaustion and starvation in Mühlenberg, near Hanover, in March 1945. In February 1946, the artists Edgar Fernhout (1912-1974), John Rädecker (1885-1956), Charley Toorop (1891-1955), Wim Schuhmacher and Carel Willink took the initiative to reopen the gallery, but Van Lier’s widow was finally forced to give it up at the end of 1949. The gallery was taken over by a namesake (but not of the same family), the painter and tribal art collector Leendert Van Lier (1910-1995), one of the main suppliers to Prof. Theodoor Pieter (Theo) Van Baaren (1912-1989) and Cornelis Pieter Meulendijk (1912-1989). Kunstzaal Van Lier in Amsterdam closed its doors for good in 1954, when Leendert moved to Utrecht, where he remained until 1961. New Ireland mask, Bismarck Archipel. Wood, paint, fiber and shell. 57 x 20 x 37 x 40 cm. Ex-coll. Georg Tillmann, Carel van Lier. © Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. Inv. TM-1772-2294. A dandy-like figure, elusive in many respects, Carel Van Lier appears to have been a complex man with an introverted character. He was one of the greatest promoters of modern art and a key figure on the art scene of his time. With unwavering passion and conviction, he did not hesitate, even in financially difficult times, to support numerous artists, enabling many of them to come to light and gain recognition. Carel Van Lier was a lifelong advocate of art without hierarchy or prejudice. With his eye trained solely on its aesthetic aspects and its artistic value, Van Lier will likewise be remembered as one of the most ardent defenders and champions of non-Western art.
