ViKtor IV
VIKTOR – whose real name was Walter Carl Glück, was born in New York City in 1929.
His parents were first generation immigrants - his father was from Germany and his mother was greek.
Walter – now Carl - was in his youth gifted with an unusually strong physique and abundant energy. He became a champion swimmer and later he travelled the world as a professional photographer.
In the autumn of 1961 Carl came to Amsterdam, he bought an old cargo ship. He named the ship after the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Thoreaus message of simplicity and anti-materialism found a natural resonance in his character. In 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated and this event became a turn in Carls life – from that moment he considered himself an artist-painter and writer – and called himself VIKTOR.
Ina
“If my relationship to VIKTOR is an affair – at least it is a long affair. He became the ‘significant other’ the moment I first saw him and his work in the late sixties, so he became my string to life. Still is.”
We washed our simple clothes in the Amstel river as we did not have running water.
VIKTOR only ate one meal a day – in the evening. In the summer it was most often a big bowl of salad with chicken or tuna fish. In the winter it was hot soup and bread. Table manners were so so. VIKTOR used a kitten as a napkin and it seemed to like it.
Why do you live like this – people asked us. VIKTOR put it this way ”it is our normal, no big message to the world, just our way of life”.
VIKTOR never married or had children – but he adored women – they were a source of inspiration… he always confirmed my value – called forward my strength and expressed it beautifully
You make me real
enduring & becoming
Ina: VIKTOR liked to give things, thrown away by other people, a new life in this world. Even if the outside facade was rather peculiar, we had such a high degree of freedom. In the early morning, Viktor always went for a bicycle ride on his iron horse to hunt for treasures from containers and things left on the street. He wore simple, comfortable black clothes, but never shoes, only when temperatures fell below zero. His philosophy was very simple – the only real obligation in life is to bring out your best.
A man once asked VIKTOR: What are you doing? – to which he answered, “Oh I am only carrying Western culture,” and added modestly, after a pause, “I hope the others are not on vacation”.
The last word is K*A*L*A
At the end of June 1986 VIKTOR drowned whilst strengthening, under water, the base of a huge raft that was to carry his new studio for painting.
On the sunny third of July 1986, his coffin placed on a raft, sailed down the Amstel river and attracted thousands of sympathizers both on the river banks, bridges and dozens of boats followed in honor.