On the wide, windy beaches of the Netherlands, strange skeletal creatures roam. They have no muscles, no motors, and no brains. They’re made of yellow plastic tubing, and they walk. These are the Strandbeesten (“beach beasts”), the creations of Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen. A physicist by training, Jansen began building them in 1990 … 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
On July 28, 1874, Joaquín Torres-García arrived in the world in Montevideo, Uruguay, born to a Catalan father and a local mother. Despite being widely recognized as the preeminent figure of Latin American Constructivism, the artist resided in Europe and the United States for the majority of his life—a span of more than four decades. … Read more
Museum Beelden aan Zee: Origin and Concept The museum grew out of a private passion. Theo and Lida Scholten bought their first sculpture in 1966, and over the following decades built up a large personal collection. Eventually they decided to found a museum dedicated to modern sculpture so it could be shared publicly. The museum … Read more
Born amidst the industrial hum of Rotterdam in 1955, GPeter Otto transmutes the ephemeral echoes of photography and disparate visual ephemera into the tactile resonance of canvas and graphite. He eschews the cloistered detachment of the proverbial ivory tower; instead, his creative labor is a visceral, iterative alchemy. Otto’s methodology functions like a pendulum swinging between immersion and observation—an episodic retreat followed by a renewed assault upon the burgeoning image. His practice maps a trajectory from the chaotic influx of worldly perception to a distilled, deliberate visual thesis upon the substrate. Within the crucible where fleeting intent, raw materiality, and iconic configuration collide, a sovereign unity crystallizes: the internal, rigorous logic of the composition. Consider his piece *Legs*. It is a chromatic skirmish, an assembly of figures shivering in deliberate isolation. Those twin, colossal blooms of rose—erratic and evocative—beckon to the viewer, serving as the skeletal key to the titular mystery, perhaps anchoring the abstraction in the strange, gestural cadence of limbs. www.ftn-books.com has the important VOTIV TOTEM publication now … Read more
