Andries Hendrik (Henk) Munnik was a Dutch artist with a wide-ranging practice. He worked as a painter and draftsman and was also active in bookbinding design and illustration. From 1937 onwards, he lived and worked in The Hague, a city that played a central role throughout his long career.
Munnik received his artistic training at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. After completing his studies, he remained affiliated with the academy, where he worked as a teacher for thirty-five years and made an important contribution to art education.
In his own work, Munnik developed as a versatile artist. His early work focused primarily on figurative subjects, including still lifes, nudes, portraits and village scenes. Over the course of his career, his visual language broadened and he began to experiment with abstraction, a development that became particularly evident from the late 1960s onwards. This combination of figuration and abstraction is characteristic of his oeuvre.
His work shows influences from artists such as Dick Ket, Pyke Koch and Georges Braque, and is frequently associated with the École de Paris.
Munnik was actively involved in the artistic life of The Hague. Between 1951 and 1957 he was a member of the artists’ group Verve, and he was also a member of the painters’ society Pulchri Studio. Works by Henk Munnik are included in various collections, among them the collection of the Gemeentemuseum The Hague, as well as in leading national and international corporate, museum and private collections.
