Home

Piet van den Heuvel, better known as Napaku, was a multidisciplinary artist from The Hague whose life and art were inseparable. Trained at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, he developed a highly personal visual language

that moved freely between collage, mail art, drawing, assemblage, graffiti, artist books, altered records, diaries, installations and handmade airplanes.

Working from the late 1950s until his death in 2004, Napaku transformed everyday materials—postcards, magazines, photographs, found objects and handwritten notes—into poetic, humorous and often surreal compositions. His work reflects a fascination with imagination,

freedom, memory and the absurdity of everyday life. Precision and playfulness coexist in an oeuvre that is deeply personal yet universally recognisable.

Known in The Hague not only for his studio practice but also for his presence in the streets, Napaku left traces of his artistic world in public space through graffiti and interventions, while maintaining an intimate correspondence practice through handmade

mail art and postcards. His friendship with fellow artists, including Daan van Golden, formed an important part of his artistic network and legacy.

Today, Napaku’s work stands as a unique artistic universe in which art and daily life continuously merge. Through the Napaku-Gérard Foundation, his work is documented, preserved and shared with new generations.

Thea Gérard was a Dutch artist whose deeply personal and imaginative work transformed memory, family and everyday life into vivid visual storytelling. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, and later settling in The Hague, she developed a distinctive artistic voice inspired

by childhood memories, personal relationships and the emotional landscape of belonging, nostalgia and identity.

A self-taught artist, Thea Gérard worked across painting, ceramics, woodwork, embroidery and poetry, creating an intimate and recognisable world populated by portraits, family scenes, flowers, animals and dreamlike recollections. Her paintings are often associated

with naïve art, yet they reveal an expressive emotional depth in which tenderness, memory and melancholy quietly coexist. Portraiture became one of the defining elements of her oeuvre, capturing friends, family and artistic companions with warmth and remarkable

psychological presence.

Throughout her career, Thea Gérard created an artistic universe in which life and art continuously intertwined. Her work serves not only as a personal archive of memory and emotion, but also as a unique visual testimony to migration, family life and artistic

imagination. Through the Napaku-Gérard Foundation, her work is documented, preserved and shared with future generations.

News:

A recent issue of Indah magazine featured an article about the life and work of Thea Gérard (1938–1987). The article also included a call to readers to come forward with paintings and other works by Gérard that may still be held in private collections.

The appeal is part of the ongoing Napaku–Gérard Foundation project to document her artistic legacy in preparation for a future exhibition and book publication.

We are very pleased that the article has already generated several valuable responses. As a result, works by Thea Gérard have resurfaced that had not previously been included in our inventory. These discoveries help us build a more complete picture of her artistic career and of where her work has found a home over the years.

The newly discovered works will first be photographed, documented and added to the archive. Once this process has been completed, we look forward to sharing some of these works and the stories behind them here on the Napaku–Gérard Foundation website.

Do you own a work by Thea Gérard, or do you know of work in a private collection? We would still be very interested to hear from you.

Neem contact op

Welcome to the Napaku-Gérard foundation.

Made to preserve the art of Piet van den Heuvel (Napaku) and Thea Gérard.

Napaku (Piet van den Heuvel, 1935–2004)

Thea Gérard (1938–1987)

For further reading about Piet van den Heuvel (Napaku) and Thea Gérard, here are some links.