Art by Carel Willink

Willink started out in 1920s Berlin as an abstract, expressionist-leaning painter before turning decisively toward the eerie, hyper-precise realism he became known for, a style he preferred to call "imaginary realism" rather than the more common label "magic realism." His mature paintings tend to place small, unsettling human dramas in front of vast, empty, almost inhuman architecture, closer in mood to Giorgio de Chirico than to his Dutch contemporaries. He married four times, most notably late in life to sculptor Sylvia Quiël, who was 44 years younger than him. A small park near Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum now carries his name.