two group shows devoted to “naïve” art, in Amsterdam and Haarlem respectively. He was included in Nederlandse Naieve Kunst (“Dutch Naïve Art”), a volume surveying fourteen figures, with van Genk's work represented by three color reproductions. In the 1980s van Genk achieved a new height of international recognition. In 1984 he was included in the World Encyclopedia of Naïve Art, with almost a full-page reproduction of his painting Madrid, which the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne acquired the same year along with a second work, “50 Years of the Soviet Union,” for “2,500 and 3,000 guilders respectively,” relatively modest sums which angered the artist against his dealer Nico Van Der Endt. The following year the Collection de l’Art Brut acquired three works on paper by the artist, marking a commitment to represent his work in depth that culminated in a major exhibition of the museum's collection in 1986, which “establishe(d) Van Genk's international reputation.” The show was a critical success in the Francophone lands of Europe, and London's prestigious Southbank Centre responded to the show by borrowing three works by van Genk for a travelling exhibition called “In Another World,” which toured across Britain. Final years and death Now with his reputation securely established, van Genk's prices continued to rise while his works continued to be exhibited, both in several group exhibitions and no less than four monographic exhibitions just in the 1990s. Yet this burgeoning success did not satisfy van Genk's wish to live a normal life. By 1995 he was becoming increasingly withdrawn, a recluse holed up in his apartment, where he was the subject of many complaints from his neighbors, who objected to the awful smells and loud nocturnal “thumping” emanating therefrom. The following year in 1996 van Genk was involuntarily seized by the police from his Hague apartment and committed to a sanatorium. A police officer commented to van Genk's dealer, Nico van der Endt, whom the artist had desperately summoned to the scene: “We know all about Mr Van Genk. His file's a metre thick.” The floor of the apartment was found “almost entirely covered with a thin layer of dog faeces, stamped thin and dried out.” The authorities killed van Genk's dog Coco, who was evidently not housebroken. After three months, van Genk was released and allowed to return home, but his apartment, which had been such a peculiar live-in Gesamtkunstwerk, had been