van der Endt, has related, van Genk “saw Moscow as the capital city of the world's wretched outcasts. Even so, van Genk, like many others, ultimately lost all his faith in the political left, and in politics altogether. ‘Every culture discriminates’, he once said.” A painting of Prague from the mid-1970s, by its reference to the socialist reformer Alexander Dubček, suggests that the violent Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 was decisive in van Genk's disavowal of communism. Thereafter the artist most admired the social democracies of Scandinavia. His last trip was to Stockholm, where he suffered his debilitating second stroke in 1997. When Nico Van Der Endt, who became the artist's dealer and closest associate, first encountered the work, he thought it was inimitable, before remembering Kafka's The Trial: "A tightly packed, teeming, and gloomy cityscape. I could not get over it. I had never seen anything like it before. I could not compare it to anything else. Yes, Kafka. The Trial. That is the first thing that I thought of." References Allegaert, Patrick; Calliau, Annime; van Berkum, Ans; Marius; Bart. Willem van Genk: Building A World of His Own. Tielt: Lanoo, 2010. 144 pages. Allegaert, Patrick and Marius, Bart. "Art Travel Books." pp. 10–25. Van Berkum, Ans. "A Bird Above the City." pp. 32–103. Bijalji-Merin, Oto; et al. World Encyclopedia of Naïve Art. London: Fredrick Muller, 1984. Van Berkum, Ans; Satink, Carolien; van der Endt, Nico. Willem van Genk: een getekende wereld/ Willem van Genk: A marked man and his world. Zwolle: Uitgeverij Waanders b.v., 1998. Van der Endt, Nico. Willem van Genk: Chronicle of a Collaboration. Amsterdam: Uitgave, 2014. 136 pages. (In Dutch and English.) Walda, Dick. Koning der stations. Amsterdam: De Schalm, 1997. (In Dutch.) 1927 births 2005 deaths 20th-century Dutch painters Dutch male painters Dutch printmakers Outsider artists People from Voorburg 20th-century printmakers People with schizophrenia Dutch people with disabilities Artists with autism Ballpoint pen art 20th-century Dutch male artists