Piet Wijn

Born in Hilversum, Piet Wijn took courses from the Rex drawing school in Amsterdam. Wijn started his career in comics in 1947 working for the Marten Toonder Studios. He initially worked at the animation department, but he soon moved to the comics studios.

For Tom Poes Weekblad, he made a couple of historic stories with text by Walling Dijkstra, such as 'De Zwarte Hertog' (1948), 'De Moorse Tovenaar' (1948-49), Manuello Y Gonza' (1948-49) and 'Verowin' (1950-51).

Wijn began to work freelance for the studios in 1949. In 1951, he developed the text strip 'Aram van de Eilanden' in the same weekly. However, the magazine folded the same year. 'Aram' then appeared in several national and international newspapers, syndicated by Swan Features until 1960.

In addition to 'Aram', Wijn drew 'Frank de Vliegende Hollander' for Het Parool, as well as comic adaptations of 'Alleen op de Wereld' and 'De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe'. He was also present in the magazine Olidin, for which he produced two stories of 'Dick Durfal'.

Piet Wijn returned to the Toonder studios in the early 1960s, and began working on such famous series as 'Tom Poes', 'Holle Pinkel', 'Koning Hollewijn', 'Panda' and 'Kappie'. He launched 'Puk en Poppedijn' in 1964, and he drew eightteen episodes of this fairytale-like series for De Spiegel until 1968. From 1973 to 1975, he also drew nine episodes for De Prinses.

From 1969, Wijn appeared in the Dutch Donald Duck weekly with at first nine stories with the Disney character 'The Big Bad Wolf'. He then launched the poetic series 'Douwe Dabbert' with scripts by Thom Roep. From 1973, he also appeared regularly in Tina with series like 'Gloria van Goes' and 'Jennifer Scott'. In the following years, 'Douwe Dabbert' became his main activity. With this series, Wijn returned to the world of fantasy that he loved to depict. In 1984 Piet Wijn won the De Stripschapsprijs, the most prestigious prize for comics in Holland.