antiquarian books – Page 146

Posted on 06.10.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Leon Kossoff (1926)

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One of the grand old masters of British painting is Leon Kossoff. Kossoff is not very well known outside Great Britain , but had his exhibitions in one of the most prestigious museum for modern art, the Louisiana museum in Denmark. Beside that occasion he was presented on the Venice Biennale and in several group exhibitions in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 1956, Kossoff joined Helen Lessore’s Beaux Arts Gallery, located on Bruton Place in London. In 1959, Kossoff began to teach at the Regent Street Polytechnic, the Chelsea School of Art, and the Saint Martin’s School of Art, all in London. While teaching, he continued his artistic career, and soon started featuring in galleries and shows, along with his friend Frank Auerbach and other artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Keith Critchlow a school friend from Saint Martin’s. During this time, Kossoff moved his studio to Willesden Junction, and in 1966, moved his studio to Willesden Green. It is not only his friendship with Auerbach, Bacon and Freud that his paintings deserve to be known better, but the quality of them stands out from many of the rest from his generation and he deserves a place next to his three famous friends and not behind them. Kossoff is a great painter. There are 2 publications available at www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 03.10.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Cuban posters / Wim Crouwel 1971

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It is 1959 and the end of the Cuban Revolution is celebrated in the town of Havana. Since the beginning of the revolution many posters pro and contra have been published in Cuba and many of them have were great examples of political propaganda. These posters were recognized by the curators of the Stedelijk Museum as being important enough to present them in a special exhibition on Cuban posters. Wim Crouwel was asked to design the catalogue with this exhibition 1971, only 12 years after the end of the revolution .

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Because of the power of these posters he decided to use one of the most iconic on the cover. Simplicity all the way. Just the power of the South America shaped fist with simple typography made this one of my favorite catalogues in the seventies of the Stedelijk Museum. Of course it is available at www.ftn-books.com together with many other Stedelijk Museum / Crouwel designed catalogues

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Posted on 02.10.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Han Schuil (1958) …. a contemporary Pop Art artist

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If you look at the Han Schuil paintings from recent years . Your first association is Pop Art. But look at them in retrospect and you must conclude that it is a natural development from his earlier works into these most recent ones.

Since the mid eighties he stayed true to his preferred material. An aluminium bearer, painted with alkyd and enamel. I still admire his works and because of the use of aluminium i think they stand out, giving the works both an abstract and an artificial industrial look. Schuil is for me one of the great dutch artists . www.ftn-books.com has some Han Schuil titles worth collecting.

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Posted on 01.10.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Gabi Dziuba (1951)

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Jewelry artist and a lifetime friend of Günther Förg. Both had a different approach to art. Where Günther Förg chose for abstract geometric painting. Gaby Dziuba chose for jewelry. I think it is fair to say that Dziuba was Günther Förg his “muse”. He used Dziuba on many occasion as his model in his photographs and this is the reason why i would like to show in this blog that one specific catalogue is very important as an artist book. Dziuba had in 1998 a solo exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. The catalogue with this exhibition did not sell very well, but when you look into the colofon, you will find that many of the photographs within the catalogue were taken by Günther Förg. An excellent reason to pick up this catalogue for a reasonable price at www.ftn-books.com. It is still available , but when people realize that this is a disguised artist book by Günther Förg it will be picked up by many and will become a rare collectible.

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Posted on 05.09.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Gabriel Orozco (1955)

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Yes ….it takes time to appreciate the works by Gabriel Orozco, but fortunately we have had the chance to experience his works on several occasions including the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary artists of his generation. Employing a diverse practice that includes installation, sculpture, painting, and video, Orozco’s work is characterized by its focus on reinterpreting everyday objects: in his seminal La DS (1993), the artist cuts out the middle third of a Citroën car, resulting in an object that is at once familiar and totally alien. “What is most important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum,” he has said, “but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again.” Born on April 27, 1962 in Jalapa, Veracruz, his father was the Mexican muralist Mario Orozco Rivera. Through him, the younger Orozco was exposed to the world of galleries and artists at a young age, and he went on to study at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. He has been the subject of several major exhibitions, notably including a 2009 mid-career retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York which went on to travel to the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and finally the Tate Modern in London in 2011.

Only one monographic publications on Orozco is available at www.ftn-books.com, but his importance is growing every year and he has participated in some major exhibitions which catalogues are available too.

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Posted on 29.08.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Betty Woodman (1930)

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If there is one ceramist who has had an international career and exhibited all over the world it must be Betty Woodman. On several occasions she exhibited her works in the Netherlands in Museums and Galleries and i remember her exhibition from 1996 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. With this exhibition an excellent catalogue was published, which is available at www.ftn-books.com

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The reason why she had such an interesting and world wide career must be found in the accessibility of her art. Bright, primary colors and abundant shapes of her ceramics make her work stand out and are very appealing for many and because of this many museums and collectors around the globe added her works to their collections. Betty Woodman ceramics can be found in ao.:

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Posted on 27.08.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Jonieke van Es (1966-2012) and the ultimate Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita book.

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It was in the very first beginning of her museum career that i met Jonieke. Jonieke studied at Groningen University and after an apprenticeship at ao. the Gemeentemuseum, she became curator at this museum. Moving forward after this job to Curator of collections at the Boymans van Beuningen Museum, but sadly died at too young an age in 2012. In those early Gemeentemuseum days she started a project on the works by Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, Yes the one who taught M.C. Escher, which resulted in the most spectacular book on Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. A true catalogue Raisonne, which will be the standard book on his works for at least a century. The book was published in 2005 by Waanders and is completely sold out for over a decade now. But now i finally found another copy and for those of my readers that were looking for this one….it is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 25.08.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Jan Toorop ( 1858-1928)… a 19th century dutch master

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If there is one artist who brought impressionism into dutch art, it must be Jan Toorop. Roughly you can divide his artistic career into 4 phases. The first being his impressionist period ( a memberof Les XX), the second his neo impressionist period, the third being his symbolistic period and the last period is his realistic period in which he was converted completely into a Roman Catholic artist. Toorop is interesting because of his first 3 periods. Being born in Indonesia he has a different approach to his subjects and experiments with techniques and colors and uses a color scheme completely different from his dutch contemporaries. They focussed on skies and landscapes , whereas Toorop focussed on people and their surroundings. There are some great examples to be found in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag of his very early period where he painted with a palette knife and broad brushes. His very atmospheric scenes in London, a city where he lived for a couple of years and where he painted some great paintings. The “Trio Fleuri” is one of the most appealing painting from his London years, together with the Waterloo Bridge painting and both can be seen in the collection of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

and for those interested in Modern Art. A great painting by Toorop that symbolizes the dawn and rise of Modern Art in this world.

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There are some nice publications on Toorop available at www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 19.08.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Willem Sandberg (1897-1984) typography

It is almost a year since I tipped the readers of my blog to start to collect Willem Sandberg typography. Since, i have found some interesting examples of his excellent typography which i want to present to you. For those of you who are new in reading this blog. Willem Sandberg was a designer /typographer who became director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for a very long period ( 1945-1963) who designed many of the publications during this period of time and who contacted and presented many of the most famous 20th century artists in the Stedelijk Museum. His publications are characterized by the use of plain ( carton like papers) and the lettering looks random, made out of torn papers. But these are very accurate designs. You can find many sources of information on Sandberg on the internet, but one of the best is still the site of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. ( www.stedelijk.nl ). Now here are some new and old additions to the inventory of www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 14.08.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Willem De Kooning(1904-1997) is a dutchman

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For many people in the US , Willem de Kooning is an American painter , however ….for us dutch, de Kooning is a dutchman. Born in Rotterdam and educated at the Rotterdam evening academy and working for the METZ department store as an interior decorator until he decided to go to the US in 1926. He went as a stowaway and would become the abstract expressionist painter we admire. He met artists from and became part of the Abstract expressionist mouvement. Meeting with Pollock, Still, Rothko and Newman made him aware of his qualities as an abstract painter developing a style of his own and building an important oeuvre from there on. He never lost touch with his homecountry the Netherlands and this resulted in a large and very important collection of De Kooning paintings in the Stedelijk Museum. Edy de Wilde was the director who made this happen and it is the luck of the visitors of the Stedelijk that in one spot they can discover and admire so many excellent De Kooning paintings.