Photo archive Aad van Houwelingen

In 2018, photographer Wim Lamboo rescued over sixty photos from a container on the street. They turned out to be from the house of artist Aad van Houwelingen on the Lange Brug in Leiden, thrown away after his death when emptying the house. This year, the photos were transferred to the RKD.

Aad van Houwelingen, (Zelf)portret in zijn atelier in De Smidse in Leiden, ca. 1975 — Dirk Ketting, Aad van Houwelingen in coffee house Het Gerecht in Leiden, 1983

Happy lone wolf

Wim Lamboo knew Aad van Houwelingen (1934-2018) as a man who often sat quietly in a coffee house with a notebook. After graduating from the Royal Academy in The Hague, Van Houwelingen settled in Leiden, where he led a somewhat reclusive life. He captured what occupied him in words and pictures in small books, hand-bound in rice paper, which he took with him wherever he went. He filled the earliest surviving copy, A journal of a happy lone wolf (1967), in three months. Its private, diary-like nature allowed him to express himself without inhibitions. As he himself described it in a 1979 letter: ‘Working in the notebooks is like drawing and writing in sand, even though it is not erased’.

Aad van Houwelingen, Kast met materialen en een reeks notitieboekjes, ca. 1975 — Aad van Houwelingen, Cupboard with materials and a series of notebooks, c. 1978

Work

The more than fifty booklets Van Houwelingen filled with writing and drawing, form the starting point for his work. He drew and painted, made etchings, silk-screen prints and collages and used ever-changing materials. For many of his silkscreens, he used series of photos of pages from the booklets, sometimes combined with completely full pages, etched images or photos of objects from his immediate surroundings. He also transformed his studio into a Ruimtelijk Boek (Spacious Book), by pasting the walls with sheets cut loose from the booklets.

Schetsboek van Aad van Houwelingen — Aad van Houwelingen, Still life with unfolded notebook, c. 1970

Photo archive

The more than 60 vintage black-and-white photographs of Van Houwelingen include shots taken in his studio in the attic of the Kweekschool voor Zeevaart in Leiden and in De Smidse, a house on the Langebrug where he lived and worked. Also included are photographs of his notebooks, of his family and his parental home and some portrait photographs of Van Houwelingen. The archive is a nice addition to the RKD's collection of preciosa photographs and the collection of artist portraits and studio photos.