Sprenger, Henk - 1 Original page - Kick Wilstra - (jaren 1950)

About the artist;
Henk Sprenger (January 3, 1919 – December 29, 2005) is one of the Netherlands' most famous (classic) and important cartoonists, along with Toonder, Kresse, Dulieu, Kuhn, and Piet Wijn. Sprenger's comics enjoyed unprecedented fame in the 1950s. His "Kick Wilstra" was mentioned in the same breath as Tom Poes, Eric de Noorman, Captain Rob, and others.

Henk Sprenger trained as an artist for his primary education (Education Act), as the four-year secondary education program took him too long. He drew, inked, wrote, and plotted all his stories himself. For many years, he produced an average of two comics a day. Two themes are central to Henk Sprenger's work: football (Kick Wilstra) and the Great Adventure (Piloot Storm). During World War II, Sprenger worked at the Toonder Studios in Amsterdam as an animator in the cartoon department. At that time, he created drawings for Metro magazine. During the liberation of the Netherlands, Sprenger discovered the Canadian magazine The Maple Leaf. It featured several comics that Sprenger later used as inspiration for his first real comic, Demon Island. In 1948, Sprenger illustrated the book Patave the Cave Boy. An adaptation of this book was subsequently published in the weekly magazine Pum Pum and the IVIO youth magazine. He also illustrated Tom Poes Weekblad. After the war, Sprenger drew Monus, the Man of the Moon, for the Toonder Studios, with a text by A.D. Hildebrand. After his debut with Demoneneiland, Sprenger's breakthrough came with the wartime pilot Arend Stork. Arend Stork was a fitting figure in the post-war frenzy and was published in De Geïllustreerde. Arend Stork soon made way for Arend Storm, also known as Pilot Storm. Sprenger's most important and best-known comic strip is undoubtedly Kick Wilstra (Pilot Storm to a much lesser extent). In 1949, the first volume of 'Kick Wilstra', the football hero, was published, whose name was a combination of the names of the famous footballers Kick Smit, Faas Wilkes, and Abe Lenstra. This comic strip was published in the book "Het Nieuwe Avonturenboek van Ketelbinkie en zijn vrienden" (The New Adventure Book of Ketelbinkie and his Friends). Starting in 1952, Kick Wilstra appeared in the Ketelbinkie Newspaper and in Rob's Vrienden. Because the comic strip became so popular, it appeared in various newspapers and magazines. The "Kick Wilstra" newspaper strips were eventually published in 18 oblong volumes. Due to the success of the Dutch national team in the 1970s, there were frequent requests for a sequel to Kick Wilstra. This never materialized, but Sprenger did create a comic strip about Piet Keizer. Currently, a biography of Henk Sprenger is being developed, focusing on everything related to Kick Wilstra. Even celebrities such as Johan Cruyff and Jan Mulder (see photo 5) were and are Kick Wilstra fans.

Plot info
Original drawings by Kick Wilstra have always been extremely rare, and that can and will never change. A few years ago, Sprenger's artistic estate (Kick Wilstra drawings) was transferred by the family to the Allard Pierson Museum, a special collections department of the University of Amsterdam, and has since become the property of the Dutch state. This makes the chance of original Kick Wilstra drawings ever coming onto the market virtually impossible.

This page offered here was made by Sprenger in the early 1950s. Beautifully drawn in that famous style of Sprenger. Very cool also that this is a page showing Kick Wilstra playing football... The page is drawn in pencil, then inked.

This is a unique opportunity to acquire some original material from this famous comic strip. A museum masterpiece. Something for the connoisseur, the top collector seeking masterpieces.

The beautiful page will be well packaged and shipped by registered mail.