Willem Hussem was a Dutch painter and poet. He initially painted in a figurative style and moved to Paris in 1918, where he met modern painters such as Georges Vantongerloo, Piet Mondriaan, and Pablo Picasso. During the war, he painted still lifes and landscapes, preferably depicted realistically. After the war, he embraced spontaneous abstraction and abandoned recognizable depictions. Calligraphy became a major inspirational source, which led him initially to all kinds of expressive forms and, later, to balanced compositions of lines, colors, and forms against a monochrome background. He settled in The Hague with his wife during the mid-thirties due to international tensions and the threat of the fascist regime in Germany...