FTN BLOG for ftn-books.com

On May 22, 1932, Carlo Alfano was born in Naples. Following his education at the local Academy of Fine Arts, he developed into a painter and a notable figure in intermedial art. His artistic inquiry was driven by a rigorous effort to visualize the unrepresentable through fragmentation and decomposition, a pursuit that earned him a … Read more

Allan Kaprow dismantled the ivory tower of static aesthetics, catalyzing a seismic shift through the epochal emergence of ‘Happenings’ and ‘Environments.’ He treated the canvas not as a sanctuary, but as a restless, site-specific beast that perpetually evaded the suffocating grip of the marketplace. His 1959 debut, *18 Happenings in 6 parts*, functioned less like a static portrait and more like a fever dream intricately woven from orchestrated spontaneity; here, the spectator transformed into a marrow-deep accomplice. To Kaprow, art was a permeable membrane, a gossamer scrim blurred by the relentless humidity of existence. He famously posited that life’s chaotic vibrancy rendered traditional art trivial. Within the labyrinth of his philosophy, the act of ‘reinvention’ served as the bedrock. Forget the ossified tradition of the museum—that mausoleum of fixed icons. Kaprow discarded the mandate of permanence, favoring a metamorphosis that acted like a chrysalis shedding its shell with every iteration. His … Read more

The sculptor Jacques Lipchitz is best known for the Cubist works he made in Paris during the early 1900s. As a collector he was mainly interested in African art, which had a profound influence on his work, but he also acquired modern works from artist friends, particularly Pablo Picasso. Lipchitz moved to Paris from his … Read more

Richard Paul Lohse (1902–1988) was a Zurich painter and graphic designer, and a central figure of constructivist-concrete art. From 1943 he concentrated on orthogonally structured image fields, building systems with an ever wider colour spectrum, which for him expressed a modern, non-hierarchical society. His rigorous grids of colour modules are some of the most disciplined … Read more

Born in 1964, Rinke Nijburg is a Dutch artist known for large-scale works in charcoal, pastel, ink and pen — drawings that feel closer to mythology than to observation. Pieces like Dracunculus vulgaris and Lagoon stretch well over a metre across, dense with the plant, animal and cosmic imagery that runs through his practice. Nijburg … Read more

A Life Spent Inside One Square There’s a certain kind of artist who doesn’t chase trends — they pick a single question and spend a lifetime turning it over in their hands. Günter Tuzina is exactly that kind of artist. For roughly fifty years, he has been asking the same deceptively simple question: what happens … Read more

Arno Nollen (1964–2022) was an artist known for his approach to photography and visual storytelling. Rather than working with single, standalone images, he built large series and sequences, where each photo was just one piece of a much bigger picture. His works shifted subtly from image to image, sitting somewhere between traditional photography and film—not … Read more

Rather than striving for technical photographic perfection, Paul Kooiker (born 1964) finds the essence of his artistry in the curation and transformation of images rather than in individual shots. He intentionally adopts a “poor” photographic technique during his initial shoots, capturing hundreds of frames that frequently feature blur, grain, or overexposure. Once this raw, experimental … Read more

Widely recognized as a trailblazer in both conceptual and media art, Muntadas explores the intricate dynamics between public and private spheres, while critically examining how communication conduits are utilized to either suppress or disseminate ideologies. His portfolio reveals a preoccupation with social and political commentary, expressed through a diverse array of formats, ranging from installations, … Read more

Since the outset of his career, German creator Michael Badura (b. 1938) has dedicated his practice to scrutinizing the inner workings of imagery alongside the nuances of verbal, visual, and sociocultural perception. His methodology employs a variety of processes, actions, and compositions designed to decipher human experience and daily life, ultimately aiming to construct a … Read more

Born in 1914 in Rotterdam, Dirk de Herder was cradled by the melodic cadence of his father Alle’s musical vocation. Initially, he sought solace in the tactile dance of the paintbrush; yet, the camera lens whispered a more profound siren song—a medium where visual observation and rhythmic composition coalesced. He navigated the avant-garde corridors of the era with the tactical grace of a diplomat. Cultivating a kinship with Brassaï amidst the flickering lights of Paris and aligning his aesthetic compass with the seminal Henri Berssenbrugge in the Netherlands, De Herder became a conduit for creative convergence. His lens served as a silent observer for the explosive Cobra collective, forging intimate bonds with visionaries like Karel Appel and Corneille. This chronicle of faces eventually migrated to the studios of the VARA; between 1954 and 1964, he immortalized a pantheon of performers. Whether capturing the whimsical guise of Pipo … Read more