Category: antiquarian books

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Sigfrido Martin Begue (1959-2010)

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Mix Gino Severini with Hergé and put in some of the great poster art of the 20th century and you will have an idea of the works of Sigfrido Martin Begue. He is the third of the lesser known artists i would like to propose to you.

The first time i heard about Begue was when he was having an exhibition at the Living Room. I did not see the exhibition myself, but years later i acquired the catalogue for my inventory and saw for the first time why thsi artist is so attractive to me.

It is is this mix of the absurd and the comic like style i like so much. Just take a look at these 2 examples and you know exactly what i am talking about.

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Valérie Favre (1959)

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Born in Switzerland , but working for most part of her artistic life in Berlin, Favre has gathered a loyal following of collectors. Her work is a typical feminal mix of abstraction and story telling.

Within the composition there are always recognizable elements, but background and even some of the props in the painting can be purely abstract.

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Valérie Favre makes up stories and tells us these stories, gradually mixing in their sociopolitical influences: war, death, suffering, as well as a few well-known suicides mingling with hybrid creatures in quest of sex, both masculine and feminine. In this way, her works can be seen as a kind of index of the world’s fears and anxieties. Yet, as the artist treats these anxieties with the derisory irony of a piece of paper, she also imposes a distancing from them, a distance from which rises humor.

Outside Germany her art is hardly known and certainly deserves to be known much better.

www.ftn-books.comwww.ftn-books.com has a nice Valerie Favre title available

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Frank van Hemert publications

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Because i have a long time admiration for the works by Frank van Hemert , i started to collect his publications and since 2007 i even could buy a painting and some drawings by the artist. In the meantime i visited many bookmarkets and whenever i find a book by van Hemert , i can not resist it and I buy it. I am almost complete now for my own library, but i have bought so many of his titles that i have now several double or triple in my lown ibrary. These i have now put up for sale, so please take a look at www.ftn-books.com to find some very nice van Hemert titles available.

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Timm Ulrichs (1940)

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Timm Ulrichs (born in 1940) is considered one of the most influential German conceptual and action artists. He writes concrete poetry, makes performance art, and works as a sculptor.

For his work, Timm Ulrichs has received numerous international prizes, but in a conscious gesture of rejection, he withdrew from the art market. Even though his early performances and happenings have art historical significance in terms of determining an avant-garde art after 1960, his entire oeuvre is often only known to insiders. As an artist’s artist, Timm Ulrichs is widely respected.

Ulrichs has been active as a self-proclaimed “total artist” since 1959 when he displayed himself in a glass box and determined himself “the first living artwork”. In that year, he established the Werbezentrale für Totalkunst, Banalismus und Extemporismus [Advertising agency for total art, banalism, and extemporism] in Hanover, which was to serve the propagation, development and production of total art. Under the motto “art is life, life is art”, he called himself “the perfect gesamtkunstwerk”. www.ftn-books.com has two Ulrichs titles available.

 

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André Thomkins (1930-1985)

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The books i am now very keen on and am selling at a much higher price level than the ordinary Eighties and Nineties books are those that i put up for “sale” a long time ago when i was working as the Museumshop manager at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. We had to make space in those days, because the very limited space available was not large enough to accomodate a large stock and in my wisdom, i decided to put up the Dieter Roth, Broken Music and Andre Thomkins publications up for sale because their sales were well below par.

In retrospect this is one of the bad decissions i have made, but at that time it was the only right one to take.  The result …books were sold out over time……, but  i now always try to make the pruchase when a Dieter Roth or Andre Thomkins book is encountered at the book markets or at auction. In the past 20 years i have collected in this way some very nice Dieter Roth and Andre Thomkins titles and what strikes me …in the last couple of years the interest in Andre Thomkins is rising. I conclude that he finally is appreciated fro the great artist he is and that the editions that have been made with Thomkins ( specially the Hansjorg Mayer ones) have become desirable and collectable books.

www.ftn-books.com has some Andre Thomkins titles still available

 

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Stephen Buckley (1944)

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I do not know this for certain, but because i could not find many pictures of Stephen Buckley, my guess is he is an introvert perhaps even a shy person and this picture of his character would fit the art that he makes. Large in size and very abstract, but filled with figures that are not very common and certainly not constructivist. There seems to be a mouvement in his paintings, realized by dividing the space , bending the canvas or shifting pannels from each other. This way of setting up the composition and expressing himself makes his paintings very authentic.

For more than forty years Buckley has concerned himself with addressing the major themes of the twentieth century through a personal style oscillating between the matiere of Schwitters, the dandyism of Picabia and the intellectual rigour of Duchamp by deconstruction and reconstruction. Eventually self-reference was inevitable and there is now a large portfolio of themes, references, motifs and symbols which are continually reworked and reinvented. Scale has always been significant from the 20 foot La Manche (1974) to a great number of ‘carry on’ sized works over a period of years.

www.ftn-books.com has a nice Buckley publication available

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Aline Thomassen (1964)

To my knowledge there are only 4 larger publications on Aline Thomassen

  • Mieren rennen onder mijn huid, Maurits van der Laar , 1999
  • The ideal Muslim woman, GEM, 2005
  • Corps fertiles, 2011
  • Cherchez la Femme, Bonnefanten museum, 2014.

It looks as only every 3 or 4 years a larger publication by Aline Thomassen is published

Her subjects in most of her paintings is the female figure and the powers that drive the women in the paintings/watercolors. These woman are unpolished, beautiful and at the same time vulnarable, but also in practically all works they look extremely strong.

The woman depicted are Moroccan woman and perhaps this is why these works intrigue so much. You know the subject looks different, the figure is not familiar nor is their pose. This makes the composition not like the ones of many of Thomassen her contemporaries. In this way Aline Thomassen her works have a signature of their own. Highly recognizable because of the use of her subjects, underlined with arab text and practically in every painting the use of a blood red color which emphasizes, without exception,  the dramatic compositions she realizes in her works.

Aline Thomassen is a great artist.

 

 

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the dutch and het Drinkglas

Look at the Golden age paintings and in many cases a roemer glass is depicted in the painting.

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In later centuries the dutch have become known for their glass designs. Of course there are the glass objects and vases by Meidam and Copier, but i now want to direct your attention to the drinking glasses of Andries Copier . A glass artist/designer who has made one of the most functional and best wine glasses in the world. In the Netherlands this glass is called the Copier GILDE glass and it is stil made by the famous dutch Leerdam glass factory. Schermafbeelding 2019-04-02 om 16.11.18This glass has become a classic over the years and the series has white, red and water glasses. It has become an almost instant classic . From the first days it was made millions and millions of these were sold all over the world. So many of you have a piece of dutch design in their homes without knowing it. A book on HET DRINKGLAS is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Jean Moral (1906-1999)

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In 1925, the same year André Kértész moved from Hungary, Jean Moral began photographing in Paris.  Like Kértész, his photographs exemplified the inherent aesthetic of Modernism, which by the mid 1920s was in full swing.  Moral’s photographs from 1925 to 1940 depict his eye for graphic abstraction and tight composition.  His personal expression is most apparent in his images of Paris, his intimate portraits of his wife, his self-portraits and the more experimental images he made with photograms and double exposure.


During the 1930s, Moral’s work was included in numerous exhibitions with other photographers including Laura Albin-Guillot, Brassaï, Florence Henri, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, André Kértész, Francois Kollar, Germaine Krull, Dora Maar, Man Ray and Maurice Tabard.

It is hard to find good publications on Moral but there is one i can really recommend. The year of his deat MARVAL editions published a beautiful monograph on this classic french photographer . The book is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Julia Ventura (1952)

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Portuguese born, but working in both Lisbon and Amsterdam her works reflect her surroundings. There was a time in the mid Eighties that her work was widely available in the Netherlands because exhibitions were held at many places in the Netherlands including some renowned museums. But starting in the late Nineties her works were becoming more scarce and less available in the Netherlands. Her focus was no longer on the Netherlands and Portugal alone, but her works were presented in Switzerland, China and Spain too. Later i learned that most of her work is now being sold and available in Portugal itself . Julia Ventura is represented by some well known Portuguese galleries.

In her work, Júlia Ventura explores which role the photo can play in the representation of the self. Her initial work features black and white photos of herself in emotion-filled poses. In later work, in ingenious photos of her fingerprint which she adapts using all kinds of methods and techniques, she focuses on the suggestion of authenticity that emanates from the image.

www.ftn-books.com has one of the first Ventura publications available