immediately the quality of his work, but also that the young artist was beyond the reach of the faculty's lessons. At the director's suggestion van Genk was allowed to take his own path at the academy, and consequently he remained an autodidact. At this time van Genk was noticed for the first time, with the journalist R.E. Penning praising his work as "panoramas of Lilliput towns as seen by Gulliver." In 1964, Beljon organized the first solo exhibition of van Genk's work in Hilversum. The Dutch writer W.F. Hermans opened the show and commented that his works “are frighteningly beautiful, but they will remind many of something they would rather forget.” But high prices meant few sales, and mixed publicity, some of which insulted the artist's mental capacities, partly motivated van Genk's withdrawal from this early public attention. Furthermore, he was his own harshest critic, unable to bear the sound of his recorded voice. A television interview to publicize the exhibition so horrified the artist that for decades he refused to be filmed, photographed, or taped. Van Genk's inferiority complex was thus a major impediment to the development of his career as an artist. Van Genk withdrew from publicity, but continued to work and exhibit. In 1966 eight works sold at a show by the Galerie Alfred Schmela in Düsseldorf; notably, the prestigious Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam's museum of modern art, bought van Genk's painting Metrostation Opera. With his successes in the mid-1960s, van Genk was finally able to indulge his passionate interest in cities by visiting them in person. His art through 1960 was devoted to relatively straightforward panoramic depictions of cityscapes, views that the artist culled from the printed material he perused, such as travel guides, postcards, and magazines. Now he visited many cities, including Stockholm, Madrid, Rome, Moscow, Budapest, Frankfurt, and wall-divided Berlin. Landmark architecture from these cities, especially train stations, feature in many works by the artist. In the 1970s van Genk's career as an artist continued with modest success. He was included at the Düsseldorf IKI art fair in 1974, but nothing of his sold. Initially represented by Pieter Brattinga, by the 1970s van Genk was represented by the gallery De Ark. The gallery's last show in 1976 before being taken over by the Hamer Gallery, which continued to represent the artist, was devoted to van Genk's work. Also in 1976 van Genk was included in