Pyke Koch (1901-1991) was a Dutch-born painter, whose art reflected a fantastic realism full of symbolic meaning. He took the art world by storm around 1930, starting his career late after quitting law-school. With no formal training, he proved to be a natural talent. Intrigued by the cinema, the city’s backstreets and scenes from the carnival; he turned streetwalkers into gutter goddesses, showing them flawed but nevertheless proud. His work made him become one of the most notable figures of magic realism, heavily drenching his canvases with hidden symbolism that is up to the viewer to find and interpret. He also happens to be the grandfather of one of our very own Loft teammates and with that, he has inspired a lot of the Loft’s mentality. Now that the Centraal Museum in Utrecht is showing a retrospective on the artist, founder of The Loft and grandson Floris sat down to offer us a personal view on his paintings.