Riek Milikowski-de Raat was born in 1918 into a Christian, working-class family in the Jewish quarter, of Amsterdam. She was raised here before moving to Leiden (1953) and Zaandam (1971), returning to live and work again in Amsterdam (1995) until today.

As the eldest daughter she had considerable responsibilities, duties that meant looking after the family and its income, only finding education intermittently. From 1936 she managed to attend classes at the Institute for Applied Art Teaching, later at the New Arts School, and at the studio of Jan Havermans. This schooling, particularly from 1933 under Paul Citroen, was strongly anti-fascist and influenced by Bauhaus principles, later to be banned under the German occupation. During the war years she was an active member of the resistance movement and scarecely able to continue her artwork.

Only from 1953 did she manage to continue her development at Leiden (a.o. she was a member of 'Ars Aemula Naturae'), also attending classes in the Hague at the Free Academy and the Academy for Painterly Arts, under Paul Ciroen and Han van Dam.

Her work displays strong symbolic elements and inclines toward acute social and socialist beliefs. Inspired by direct experience she also encompasses nature to a high degree. Her oeuvre may be divided into three categories: still-lives, portraits and landscapes, which she does in a profound and realistic manner, not foregoing any of her socialist principles (for example, as seen in: the pencil drawings of children in her 'Winter of Starvation'; the emphatic portraits done in 'Siberian Chalk' of labourers and children from the slums of Leiden; the oils: "Fruits of the Land', "Feast of the Bread','1st. of May Tulips','February-strike anniversary', 'The White Rose', etc.).


'...In some of her works she achieves such a height it prints itself on our visual-memory. Riek de Raat makes art that grants us access to emotions from that intimate world of our loved-ones, from our human environment and nature itself...'

(Emile Meijer, Founder and 1st. Director of the van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)