Henk Helmantel was born in 1945. Henk trained at the Academy Minerva in Groningen between 1961-1965, where he started painting professionally. Helmantel is considered one of the Northern Realists and concentrates chiefly on producing still lifes and also interiors, usually of high Gothic or Romanesque architecture.

All his paintings are executed with a sublime detail and an implied tranquillity, creating an unmistakable style that conjures to mind the works of the Netherlandish painters working during the 17th century. The fastidious and brilliant attention to detail is afforded to the simple and mundane artifacts of his still lifes. This gives the paintings a feeling of timeless and elevated significance, that is s...