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Sylvie Fanchon (1953)

Sylvie Fanchon

Sylvie Fanchon is a landmark in French painting. She was born in Nairobi in 1953. She has been living and working in Paris since the early 1980’s, after she graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where she was then head of a workshop from 2001 to 2019.

For 30 years, her painting has remained faithful to radical means and intentions, in accordance with a series of previously fixed rules: two-tone color scheme, flatness of the surface, absence of depth and extremely schematic forms. The touch, the gesture, the transparency, after having been eliminated in favor of quasi-abstract forms drawn from the world around us, become today close to the parody, the grotesque. Decontextualized, these familiar forms are difficult to identify: Sylvie Fanchon thus plays between the unknown and the recognized, between oblivion and the work of recollection, leaving room for a multiplicity of interpretations.

With around 50 artworks in public collections, Sylvie Fanchon’s work is present in more than 15 major French institutions including CNAP, MAC VAL, Pompidou Center, MAM Paris … and eight regional contemporary art funds. Sylvie Fanchon has also benefited from important monographic exhibitions at the CRAC in Sète (2015), the FRAC Franche-Comté (2018), the Espace de l’Art Concret (2019).

www.ftn-books.com has two important Fancon publications available.
 

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Ettore Spalletti

Ettore Spalletti

Ettore Spalletti (1940-2019) was born in Cappelle sul Tavo (Pescara) where he spent his whole life. He began his career when Arte Povera was revolutionizing visual culture in Italy and beyond. Spalletti developed a singular, solitary voice and a resultant body of work that exceeds any movement that circumscribes an artist to regional or ideological boundaries. Spalletti’s formal vocabulary has always melded and balanced painting and sculpture, form and color, interior and exterior space. Each work is the result of a meditative but rigorous process of applying a layer of color at the same time of each day, to capture a specific tone that recalls an hour, a season, and the weather. 

Spalletti has been the subject of major international exhibitions over the last 40 years, most recently at the Galleria Nazionale d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Rome, Italy (2021);

www.ftn-books.com has currently 1 title on Spalletti available

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Joel Shapiro (1941)

Joel Shapiro

Joel Shapiro is a sculptor and draftsman. He studied art at New York University, the city where he grew up and still lives and works. His works are recognizable, based on simple rectangular shapes of abstracted human forms. This makes him a representative of minimalism. This is reinforced by giving his works the designation Untitled.

A trip to India and acquaintance with the sculptural tradition there would prove decisive for his approach to sculpture. Shapiro has been researching space, volume, surface, and openness versus closedness all his life as an artist. This gives his sculptures an expressive power. Gradually, Shapiro’s work developed from extremely abstract to forms in which human figures are visible.

In Shapiro’s work the boundary between abstract and figurative is blurred. Prominent minimalist sculptors such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd and Richard Serra were his examples. Joel Shapiro’s work is a bit more playful and colourful.

His sculptures can be seen in all major museum collections, sculpture parks and private collections, especially in the United States. His sculptures can also be found in Australia and Europe. In 1999 Untitled was shown in Rotterdam during the sculpture route on the Westersingel.

Well known is Loss and Regeneration, a 1989 statue that was placed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, not far from the National Mall in Washington. Joel Shapiro has long led a somewhat secluded life and is reserved with the media.

www.ftn-books.com has ao the Stedelijk Museum catalogs for the Shapiro exhibition available.

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Mario Deluigi (1901-1978)

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Mario Deluigi is another painter from the stable of Galleria del Cavallino. He is one of the painters i like the most and his works remind me of the works from the early Seventies Sol LeWitt made for some italian publishers. Perhapd they have known eachother, but what remains is that the works by Deluigi are not cheap , but far less expensive than those of Sol LeWitt. Great art and still available at art galleries at a much more affordable price

Mario Deluigi was born in Treviso in 1901. The artist’s production was characterized by the use of grattage, a technique that required creating marks in negative, engraved on the surface layers of the painting, characterized by a lumpy and material surface. Color and light were the foundations of the artist’s research and the grattage works, fulcrum of his artistic production, were conceived and created in harmony with the spatialist current to which the artist adhered. The little book below is available at www.ftn-books.com

deluigi

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Herman Zeekaf (1937-2009)

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Self made architect and furniture designer is known in a very small circle of admirers. Among them were Cor and Jean Rosbeek, the founders and owners of the famous Rosbeel printers in Nuth. These brothers commissioned Zeekaf to design the in and outside of their printing facilities in Nuth in 1977 and 1991.

Beside this building he became famous for some very functional furniture. This Herman Zeekaf is now getting more and more fame , because his designs are timeless.

Others have known him from a Interior Design shop he had in the city of Heerlen. His life was filled with design, furniture and architecture and in some projects he had the oppertunity to combine all into one great work of art.

www.ftn-books.com has now the ROSBEEK special on Zeekaf available.

zeekaf

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Pierre Paulin (1927-2009)

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His designs are strongly rooted in the Sixties, but over 60 years of production by the dutch firm Artifort they have proven to be timeless.

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With comfort as his starting-point, Pierre Paulin became a freelance designer for Artifort from the 1960s. This relationship produced many iconic modernist chairs, including Ribbon, Butterfly, Mushroom, Tulip and Orange Slice. His influential designs are now also produced under licence by LaCividina – Dos à Dos. Design archive Paulin, Paulin, Paulin is run by Maia Paulin, Pierre’s wife and business partner. It offers a deep dive into his works beyond the most well-known pieces, to showcase a creator who was relentlessly producing fresh concepts even after he retired in 1994. Prolific, challenging and ground-breaking, Paulin passed away in June 2009. In November of that year, the French Government posthumously awarded him the distinction of ‘Royal Designer for Industry’.

wwww.ftn-books.com has some Paulin related publications available.

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Walter Jacob (1893-1964)

Walter Jacob during WWI

In 1910, Walter Jacob (1893-1964) started training in decorative painting in Meerane, where he met Ernst Müller-Gräfe, who would be influential for Jacob’s artistic development.  In his early work, he created especially drawings, resulting from a lack of money.  After the First World War, Jacob was a student at the Dresden Academy and in contact with Robert Sterl, whose master student he was from 1919-20. 
Jacob is not very well known, but one look at his work and you can not only date it it as typical for the Interbellum, but you also can see that this is great German Expressionist art. It took some decades for him to be recognized as being of importance but finally in 1986 a special auction at Karl & Faber was devoted to him and his works. This catalogue and poster are now available at www.ftn-books.com

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August Sander (1876-1964)

August Sander

Sander developed an interest in photography through work in photographic firms in Berlin, Magdeburg, Halle and Dresden, Germany, 1898-1899. In 1901, went to Linz, Germany, where he first worked in Greif Studio, which he ran from 1902 to 1904 with his partner Franz Stukenberg as the Studio Sander & Stukenberg. Founded the Studio August Sander für Kunstphotographie und Malerei, 1904. Sold the studio in 1909 and returned to Cologne, Germany, where he ran the Studio Blumberg & Hermann. Founded his own studio in Lindenthal, Germany, 1910. In 1910 started his major project, “Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts”, with which he was involved until the 1950s with an interruption between 1933 and 1939. “Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts” was published in Munich in 1980. Worked mainly on the themes of the Rhine countryside and the city of Cologne, 1933-1939. These photographs were published in book form in 1975. After the demolition of his studio by bombing in 1944, retired to Kuchhausen in Westerwald, Germany, where he carried on his work. Honorary member, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie, 1961. www.ftn-books.com has the Phillips publication from 2004 on the Geman Landscape series available.

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H.P. Bremmer (1871-1956)

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The book i recently read on H.P. Bremmer shows the importance of this art consultant/artist. Not only he advised Mrs Kröller Muller , but he maintained one of the most important art networks during his life, which made it possible for him to advise mrs. Kroller Muller, the very best of art which at that time was and became available. His network made it possible to acquire works by van Gogh, Seurat, Signac, Toorop ….but also more modern artists like Matisse, Toorop and Severini. The result was one of the most stunning art collections in the world and the collection still stands out for its quality and location in Otterlo. . At random some names that made it possible for H.P. Bremmer to maintain his network untiul his death in 1956. : Hannema, Huszar, Lemmen, Israels, Modriaan, Sluijters, Redonm, Toorop, Mendes da Costa.

netwerk bremmer

For those who mastered the dutch language….the very interesting book on H.P. Bremmer is now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Viktor & Rolf….a very special publication

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The Australian exhibition from 2016 was the fundament of the exhibition held at the Kunsthal to celebrate 25 years of fashion by Viktor & Rolf. Even the layout from this exhibition publication was used, but…….extended!

Beautiful and spectacular additions by the worlds best photographers and designers. Contributions by Anton Corbijn,, Cindy Sherman, Herb Ritts, Inez & Vinoodh, showing pieces worn by Madonna, Tilda Swinton and many others. I have seen many books on Fashion , but this is without a doubt one of the most spectecular ones and now available at www.ftn-books.com

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