Natasja Kensmil is one of those talents that emerged in the last 10 years and proved tobe highly important for modern art. Her art is personal and her style can not be compared to anyone else’s. If any….. i immediately though of Basquiat, but these paintings and drawings by Kensmil practically all tell a story or contain a message for the viewer. Her series of REGENTEN PORTRAITS is a tribute to women who held a position in boards and committees who took care of the old and sick. It was not possible for women to hold a position within a company or government , but these woman made charity in these years possible and took care of the old and sick in society.
Another multi panelled work is the “HUWELIJKS PORTRET VAN JOHANDE WITT AND WENDELA BICKER “. Natasja Kensmill forces us to look at our (not so nice) history and beside the importance of the art itself it makes us aware of the message too.
The book i now have for sale at www.ftn-books.com is different. Personal, horror like drawings bound and published by Boekhandel Broekhuis in 2003. Edition of only 500 copies, this book already shows the attraction of Kensmil’s drawing. They attract and repel at the same time. This is the kind of art one must admire and i will be on thelook out for work by Kensmil for our collection.
The year 1967 and half of the dutch population spoke about the nude appearance of Phil Bloom on national Television. Phil Bloom lowered the newspaper and showed her nude upper body. It was a dutch first and raised a scandal. Later on one understood that this was not just nudity , but more a kind of Avant Garde kind of art initiated by Wim T. Schippers, who made 4 Hoepla programs of which the last one was withdawn by VPRO. You can see the actual appearance of Phil Bloom here:
Since that appearance Phil Bloom wrote history and her name became a household among my genaration, but Phil Bloom is still active as an artist, but now on the creating site. She makes and creates what is called Synthetic realism. Scenes in which realism is combined with a fairytale like surroundings. A colorful figure and one of those that wrote not only history but creates better world with her art.
www.ftn-books.com has a nice signed print by Phil Bloom available
Readers will notice this second blog on Bernard Buffet. Buffet was a well known painter in the late Fifties and Early Sixties, but became out of fashion by the end of that decade. But lately there is a new interest in this painter and i can explain why. HIs gallery , galerie Garnier stayed with him during his career and never lost faith and secondly…..his way of painting in series was a way of producing a large number of paintings and i must say not all are of interest and have enough quality to convince, but there is one quality they have in common. These paintings have a style of their own. The Buffet style is there and it really is a style Buffet developed by himself. This makes these paintings stand out and the truly great ones are paintings one must admire. Perhaps Buffet is not the artist who has rose to absolute fame lije Picasso or Pollock. But his art is still there and with this art Buffet is a name which deserves a place in art history. www.ftn-books.com has added some galerie Garnier exhibtion catalogues and has collected a nice series of exhibition catalogues by Garnier which are still available.
This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose the buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.
So here is no. 1. Falling Water house, by Frank Lloyd Wright
We have never visited this one, but hope that at some time we will. Whenever there is a chance to visit and enter a great building we do not hesitate and enter…. In the past there were the Empire state, Eifel tower, Musee Louis Vuitton, Atomium, the Glasshouse in Retiro Park Madrid and so many more, but this one is probably the highest on the wish list. Together with the Rothko chapel it would be the ultimate US destination for us.
Waterfall house by FLW
The house is build over the waterfall and combines the best in japanese landscape architecture together with the modernism of FLW. Build as a vacation home for the Kaufmann family, the building quality was far less than perfect. It was necessary to restore it in order to preserve it. But restoration has completed some decades ago and now the house is a museum and can be visited .
www.ftn-books.com has some nice Frank Lloyd Wright publications available.
I found this picture at the Herb Lubalin center who has this in its collection. A very nice and typical Willem Sandberg card to wish you a Merry Christmas in 1958.
an old wish, but a new one from me….. a Merry Christmas 2021
This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose the buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.
So here is no. 2. the Rietveld – Schröder house, by Gerrit Rietveld
Rietveld Schroder huis
In 1924, Truus Schröder asked well-known Utrecht furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld to design a new house for her. A recently widowed mother of three, she wanted a dwelling completely attuned to her – and to her unconventional ideas about what a home should be. Having worked with Rietveld in the past, she knew his disdain for tradition. It was a match made in heaven.
Schröder played an important role in the design process. She knew exactly what she wanted: simplicity and a space that freed rather than constrained her…. and the result one of the most iconic houses which is still inspiring for many young architects.
This list is invented to make some quick and easy blogs for this month filled with festivities. I chose the buildings because i think they belong to the most important from all buildings realized in the last 100 years.
So here is no. 3. the Barcelona pavillion by Mies von der Rohe
Barcelona pavillion
Bauhaus inspired and made as the German pavilion for the Barcelona World fair from 1929. It was demolished after the exhibition , but because of its architectural importance rebuild. This is a pilgrimage site for almost all architecture and interior design fans., since this is one of the first projects in which the architect designed the interior as well. The Barcelona chair is a true design classic which is till made.
PS. The Miro museum is nearby too….another absolute must see when you visit Barcelona
www.ftn-books.com has some ncie publications available on Miesz von der Rohe
In the late fifties of the past century Maja van Hall studied classical sculpture at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) in Amsterdam, a solid basis for which she remains grateful to this day. For the content of her work she has developed a vocabulary of her own, which she feeds with her own experience of life. She uses the expressive potential of stone, clay, bronze and sometimes wood to give form to her own state of mind. Slowly but surely, she is gaining more and more freedom for herself and for her sculptures.
In the sixties she opted for a more informal, abstract expression in material and gesture. She never entirely foreswore figuration, though, preferring the form to emerge from her subjects. Take the small bronze of a vacuum-cleaning female she made in 1967 with the derogatory title of ‘Sloof’ (‘Drudge’). As a feminist, Maja van Hall had created a little monument to the housewife. Three decades later this small sculpture will appear as a huge blue monument (‘Filosloof‘) during the international exhibition ‘Role Models’, The Hague Sculpture 2003. A polyester version was acquired in 2009 by the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem in the aftermath of the international exhibition ‘REBELLE. Art and Feminism 1969 – 2009.
In 1968, in an abstract-expressive vein, she represented the concept of ‘Battle’ in an eponymous bronze as the aggressive confrontation of two ‘parties’ in form and counterform, light and dark, line and plane, open and closed. While she is working on a piece it takes on colour for her, sometimes quite literally when she treats it with pigments and the colour actually defines the sculpture. Such is the case with ‘Blue Dog’ (1988). Aggressive, as if it had escaped from a myth, there it stands, as large as life. In her recent installations she may also add planes of colour – pure pigment on paper – to emphasize the theatrical character of the spot and the spatial unity of the whole piece. ‘Thoughts’ (1992), which she modelled in plaster but also had cast in bronze, seems to have been worked on for so long that the form is worn away and the surface weathered, as if from centuries of use or misuse. The form of a human head can be discerned. It rests on a satin pillow. This is Maja van Hall’s comment on the aesthetic perfection of Brancusi’s work, except that in spite of – or thanks to – the destructive erosion, she has rendered visible and tangible the victory of human strength. Using her personal experience as a source of creativity, she has built up a consistent oeuvre that pays scant heed to trends. She has given her personal emotions, emotions we all feel, a place and look of their own in Dutch sculpture.
Just a simple blog on a great artist and his ideas . I admire Martijn Sandberg for his art. Every few month i look at his site and find some new works that fascinate me . Just take a dive into Martijn’s ideas and visit the link below. An internet related project by Martijn Sandberg. An art work he exclusively made available on the internet
Martijn Sandberg ‘Image Messages’The work of Amsterdam based visual artist Martijn Sandberg (1967) constantly explores border areas, such as the tension between text and image, illegible into legible, the private and the public domain. ”I make Image Messages, image is message is image.” The image hides the message. In the cut paintings, such as ‘Sorry No Image Yet’ and ‘Im Westen Nichts Neues’, there is a subtle play between the language of the image and the significance of the image, and this gives rise to questions. Here, even the lack of image seems to be elevated to an image by the artist.
The direct relationship between the image, the material bearing the image and the environment is also expressed in his site-specific works in public space and architecture. As in the ‘De Oude Weg Naar De Nieuwe Tijd’ artwork, integrated as a brick relief in the walls of the gates and the pavement of the Spaarndammerhart building, Amsterdam. Or in the sculpture ‘I Will Survive’ located at the border of a burial ground in Hardenberg, The Netherlands.
BTW. For those interested in the editions by Martijn Sandberg please visit his shop at :
THis blog is on Hilla Rebay, born in Germany but living part of her life in the US.
The inmportance of this artist is growing by the year and since i have acquired the extremely scarce original 1948 New York catalogue in which she explains what makes her paint in the way she does. The best i can do now is quote the German text which i found on Rebay. Catalogue available at www.ftn-books.com
1948 schreibt Hilla von Rebay im Katalog zur Ausstellung Gegenstandslose Malerei in Amerika in der Städtischen Kunsthalle Mannheim und zahlreichen anderen Städten in Deutschland Folgendes:
„Gegenstandslose Malerei bildet keines der uns auf dieser Welt geläufigen Dinge oder Lebewesen ab. Sie will nichts anderes sein als ein schönes, rhythmisch gegliedertes Gebilde aus Farben und Formen, das durch seine Schönheit allein erfreuen soll. Die Proportionen der Leinwand oder des Blattes selbst bestimmen diese Gliederung, die wie ein musikalisches Kunstwerk kontraproduktiven Gesetzen gehorcht. Das Grundmotiv eines Bildes gibt den Ausschlag für seinen Aufbau, der dann dem Gesetz eines eigenen Rhythmus folgt. Ein solcher Kunst noch ungewohnter Betrachter wird diese Gesetzlichkeit nicht von vornherein erkennen; erst nach längerem Umgang mit diesem Werk wird er im Unterbewussten die Wirkung seiner Schönheit und Vollendung an sich erfahren und seine im Geistigen begründete lebendige Gesetzlichkeit zu verstehen beginnen. Die gegenstandslose Malerei spricht zu denen, die für reine Schönheit empfänglich sind. Selbst wenn Formen wie Kreis, Viereck oder Dreieck Verwendung finden, Formen, die man in solchen Zusammenhang fälschlich als geometrische bezeichnet, so sind sie hier doch rein künstlerischer Natur. An und für sich betrachtet bestand die reine Form ja schon lange, bevor man etwas von Geometrie wusste, und Geometrie von sich aus war niemals imstande, diese Formen in Kunst zu verwandeln: das ist allein Aufgabe des Künstlers. …
Sicherlich ist es leicht, aus Farben und Formen ein Ornament oder einfaches Muster zu entwerfen; aber wie sich in der Musik eine Sonate durch Melodie, Rhythmus und Kontrapunkt vom einfachen Ton unterscheidet, den jeder anzuschlagen vermag, so ist es auch in der gegenstandslosen Malerei. Nur dass bei ihr, im Gegensatz zur Musik, das Auge als aufnehmendes Organ angesprochen wird. Mag der Betrachter zunächst einfach sein Gefallen am Spiel der Formen empfinden, so wird er allmählich doch dahin gelangen, auch die läuternden und entspannenden Kräfte eines Bildes zu erfahren, dessen Schönheit im Geistigen, nicht im Sinnlichen beruht. …
Vor Tausenden von Jahren gebot uns die Bibel, kein irdisch geschaffenes Bild zu verstehen. Heute endlich besitzen wir die Voraussetzungen, dies Gebot zu erfüllen. Religiös gesinnte Künstler empfanden die innere Verpflichtung als erste; sie verzichteten auf bloße Nachbildung der Natur und suchten dafür nach jener tiefen Konzentration und Selbstdisziplin, die zum Wesen des eigentlich Schöpferischen gehört.“
Artist/ Author: Oliver Boberg
Title : Memorial
Publisher: Oliver Boberg
Measurements: Frame measures 51 x 42 cm. original C print is 35 x 25 cm.
Condition: mint
signed by Oliver Boberg in pen and numbered 14/20 from an edition of 20
