Category: antiquarian books

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François Morellet (continued)

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François Morellet (1926 – 2016), a prolific self-taught artist who pursued painting, sculpting, and installation throughout a successful career spanning over six decades. His approach to geometric abstraction was radical and innovative, continuously exploring the creative potential of kinetic systems and challenging the viewer’s perception and understanding of the physical picture plane. Through a commitment to basic geometric forms and a methodology of rigorous objectivity and personal detachment, Morellet achieved a unique artistic voice.

In his work, Morellet incorporated a range of materials such as steel, neon tubes, iron, adhesive tape, wire mesh, and wood, effectively breaking down traditional hierarchies and embracing elements of randomness and chance. This playfulness and wit are evident not only in his artwork itself, but also in the titles he gave to each piece, often utilizing tongue-in-cheek puns, parody, and wordplay.

The prolific artist’s dedication to his craft and his transformative use of materials have left a lasting impression on the world of contemporary art. His legacy continues to inspire and captivate audiences, reminding us of the importance of pushing boundaries and constantly evolving.

Born and raised in the charming town of Cholet, France, François Morellet devoted himself entirely to his literary pursuits before returning to take reins of his family’s toy factory. This provided him with financial stability, as well as the opportunity to familiarize himself with various fabrication techniques, ultimately shaping his artistic practice. Initially, Morellet delved into figurative painting in the 1940s, but it was his visit to Brazil in 1950 that proved to be a pivotal moment, exposing him to Concrete art and the captivating works of Max Bill. Other influential figures for the artist include Jean Arp and Theo van Doesburg, along with the precise geometric patterns and ethereal beauty of Islamic decorative art, which he encountered while exploring the Alhambra in Spain in 1952. As a result, Morellet’s works evolved into simple systems and rules, effectively removing his own subjectivity and challenging traditional notions of composition. In his own words, his artistic journey became “an adventure, as whimsical as it is systematic.” In the late 1950s, Morellet was introduced to the “Duo-collages” of Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp through his friend, Ellsworth Kelly. This inspired him to incorporate chance as a central element in his works, often creating pieces based on random numbers found in his local phone directory or using the infinite sequence of decimals of pi.

One of the founding members of the experimental artist collective, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), Morellet delved into the possibilities of Kinetic art and the viewer’s active engagement, effectively demystifying the romantic notion of the individual genius artist. Before the group’s formation, Morellet, Piero Manzoni, and several other collaborators were invited to showcase their works at Manzoni’s Galleria Azimuth in Milan. The exhibition was an intriguing one, with the artists’ names withheld at the instigation of none other than François Morellet himself.

Morellet’s oeuvre has been featured in several noteworthy international group exhibitions including Documenta in Kassel, Germany (1964 [in collaboration with GRAV], 1968, and 1977), and the Venice Biennale (1970 and 1990). In 1971, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands organized his debut solo museum exhibition, which subsequently toured across Europe. Noteworthy about the exhibition was the varied presentation of Morellet’s pieces in each venue, creatively experimenting with different orientations such as horizontal, vertical, and even upside down. Some of the major retrospectives of Morellet’s work have been hosted by esteemed institutions such as Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1977), the Centre Pompidou (1986 and 2011), and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume (2000-2001) in Paris. In an unprecedented move, Morellet became only the second living artist to exhibit at the Louvre Museum in 2010, showcasing a site-specific permanent installation titled ‘L’esprit d’escalier’. His work is prominently featured in notable public collections including Centre Pompidou, Dia Art Foundation, Los Angeles Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Seoul Museum of Art, Tate Britain, the Tel Aviv Museum, the Kunsthaus Zurich, and the Nationalgalerie Berlin.

Morellet first garnered attention from the American audience when his work was showcased at the iconic 1965 exhibition ‘The Responsive Eye’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A comprehensive retrospective of his work was later held in North America in 1984-85, traveling to acclaimed institutions such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal, Brooklyn Museum, and Center for the Fine Arts in Miami. In 2017, Dia Art Foundation presented the long-awaited major survey of Morellet’s work in the United States, marking over three decades since his last retrospective in the country.

www.ftn-books.com has some of the greatest Morellet titles available.

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Marcel van Eeden (continued)

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Marcel van Eeden (born in 1965 in The Hague) weaves intricate visual narratives. Drawing inspiration from existing images found in magazines, newspapers, and books, he skillfully reinterprets them through his own unique lens. Uniquely, all the source material he utilizes predates his own existence.

This intentional choice reflects Van Eeden’s fascination with the notion of non-existence: the period that came before his own existence. By manipulating and adapting found images, he seeks to claim ownership over experiences that he himself cannot physically have.

Since 2005, Van Eeden has worked in a series format. One striking example is Cat. 2.8: Desserts (2015), a series of lithographs depicting various desserts. Although clearly not photographs, the glazed icing and greasy textures are brought to life through Van Eeden’s realistic style. More importantly, his “translations” of these images allow them to become part of a larger, more meaningful narrative. They take on new, personalized significance. Typography also plays a crucial role in Van Eeden’s work. It serves both as a preview of an aspect of the visual narrative and a standalone piece. By piecing together images from various sources and time periods, Van Eeden creates a fictional storyline.

Through his unique method of finding and utilizing visual elements, Van Eeden transforms seemingly unrelated images into a cohesive and multifaceted story. He integrates disparate sources, both in terms of content and time, to construct a fictional world. In his oeuvre, a few recurring characters appear time and time again: archaeologist Oswald Sollmann, botanist K.M. Wiegand, and psychiatrist Matheus Boryna.

I have always aspired to be a writer. However, I have discovered that building a story using photographs from magazines is indeed possible. It’s like using history as a giant bin of Lego pieces, with each piece representing a historical fact or photo. These pieces may seem unrelated, but they can be used to construct a story entirely made up of separate facts that, as a whole, may not be entirely true.

Van Eeden received his education at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague (1989-1993). His works have been exhibited at prestigious locations such as Albertina in Vienna, Drawing Room in London, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, and GEM in The Hague.

www.ftn-books.com has a nice selection of van Eeden titles available.

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Enzo Cucchi (continued)

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Enzo Cucchi, born in 1949 in Morro d’Alba, a rural village in the central Italian province of Ancona, embarked on a journey of self-taught painting that would earn him various accolades in his early years. Despite his initial focus on poetry, Cucchi was frequently in the company of poet Mino De Angelis, who oversaw the publication “Tau.” Through “La Nuova Foglio di Macerata,” a small publishing house, Cucchi forged a connection with art critic Achille Bonito Oliva, a crucial figure in the artist’s future success.

In its catalogues, “La Nuova Foglio di Macerata” featured written works by artists such as Cucchi’s “Il veleno è stato sollevato e trasportato!” in 1976. Cucchi’s frequent trips to Rome in the mid-seventies reignited his interest in the visual arts, prompting him to temporarily abandon his poetry in order to solely focus on his craft. It was during this time that Cucchi encountered various artists, including Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, and Nicola de Maria, with whom he engaged in close collaborations and thought-provoking intellectual dialogues.

Achille Bonito Oliva was the first to recognize this emerging group of Italian artists of the seventies as a cohesive unit. As a result, the group has often held exhibitions collectively or featured individual artists in the Netherlands. The Groninger Museum and the Stedelijk Museum both held exhibitions during the eighties and nineties and acquired several works for their collections. Along with these exhibitions, some outstanding catalogues were published, a selection of which can be found at www.ftn-books.com.

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Eduardo Paolozzi (continued)

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Eduardo Paolozzi, a remarkable figure in the world of Pop Art, was a sculptor and printmaker. His elaborate public projects, including the British Library courtyard and the London Underground, transformed spaces and captured the public’s attention.

Raised in Edinburgh by Italian parents, Paolozzi was greatly influenced by the American magazines he read, often collecting and pasting his favorite pictures into a scrapbook. This habit eventually became a defining technique in many of his iconic pieces. However, when Italy joined forces with Germany during World War II, Paolozzi, then a teenager, was labeled an enemy alien and interned. His father and grandfather were tragically killed when the ship they were on was attacked by a German U-boat.

After his release from internment, Paolozzi was conscripted into the army but managed to secure a discharge by feigning madness. He then pursued his passion for art, studying in both Edinburgh and London before moving to Paris in 1947. There, he met and was greatly inspired by renowned artists such as Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, and Alberto Giacometti. It was during this time that he created I Was A Rich Man’s Plaything, now widely considered to be one of the pioneering examples of Pop Art.

However, it wasn’t until 1952 that Paolozzi publicly displayed this work and over 40 other collages at the inaugural meeting of the Independent Group. Along with other influential artists, including photographer Nigel Henderson and sculptor Richard Hamilton, Paolozzi championed the use of found objects and popular culture in art. Their revolutionary ideas were brought to life in the groundbreaking 1956 exhibition, This is Tomorrow, held at the Whitechapel Gallery.

In the 1960s, Paolozzi continued to work prolifically, taking on teaching positions, experimenting with sculpture, and further developing his screenprinting skills. One of his most notable works from this time is As Is When, a series of prints inspired by the renowned philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. For his contributions to the arts, Paolozzi was bestowed with the title of CBE in 1968 and elected a Royal Academician in 1979.

www.ftn-books.com has several Paolozzi titles available.

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Francisco Clemente (continued)

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Francesco Clemente, an Italian contemporary artist, boasts a diverse background having lived in Italy, India, and New York City. His artistic style draws inspiration from traditional Indian art and culture. Clemente’s expertise spans various mediums, including drawing, fresco, graphics, mosaic, oils, and sculpture. He rose to prominence as a key figure in the Italian Transavanguardia movement of the 1980s, which rejected Formalism and conceptual art in favor of figurative art and Symbolism.

Born in 1952 in Naples, located in the southern region of Campania in Italy, Clemente briefly attended the faculty of architecture at the Sapienza, the university of Rome. However, he did not obtain a degree before shifting his focus entirely to his artistic pursuits. In Rome, he rubbed shoulders with fellow contemporary artists such as Luigi Ontani, Alighiero Boetti, and the American Cy Twombly. Boetti, who was a decade older, took on the role of both friend and mentor, and the two even ventured to Afghanistan in 1974. With Ontani, Clemente performed at the Galleria L’Attico. Despite his associations with artists from the Arte povera movement and his admiration for others such as Pino Pascali and Michelangelo Pistoletto, Clemente chose to concentrate on paper as his primary medium. He produced ink drawings based on his dreams and memories from his childhood and showcased his collages in a solo exhibition at the Galleria Giulia in Rome in 1971.

Clemente’s fascination with India began in 1973 on his first of many visits to the country. He eventually set up a studio in Madras (now Chennai) and immersed himself in the religious and folk traditions of India, as well as the country’s traditional art and crafts. In 1976 and 1977, he visited the library of the Theosophical Society of Madras to examine its religious literature. In 1980 and 1981, he collaborated with miniature painters from Orissa on his project “Francesco Clemente Pinxit”; a collection of twenty-four gouaches on antique hand-made rag paper.

www.ftn-books.com has several Clemente publications available:

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Jesus Rafael Soto (continued)

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Born in Venezuela, Jesús Rafael Soto was a renowned sculptor and painter whose career began as a helper in painting movie advertisements. He later received formal training at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas, alongside contemporaries Carlos Cruz-Diez and Alejandro Otero. He also spent three years teaching at a small art academy in Venezuela.

Soto gained recognition for his contributions to the development of op-art and kinetic art – forms of art that incorporate movement. In 1950, he moved to Paris, where he became acquainted with the Atelier d’Art Abstrait through fellow artists and exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. A year later, he visited the Netherlands with a group of friends and was inspired by the works of Piet Mondrian at the Kröller-Müller Museum and Stedelijk Museum.

It was in Paris that Soto’s career as a kinetic artist took off. His open, interactive sculptures and installations, often consisting of thin hanging tubes that viewers can walk through, constantly transform and challenge the concept of reality as a collection of individual objects.

From 1970 to the early 1990s, Soto’s works were featured in prestigious museums in Paris, New York, and Amsterdam. In 1973, a museum solely dedicated to his works was opened in his hometown of Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela.

Jesús Rafael Soto passed away in Paris in 2005, leaving behind a legacy of artwork that continues to captivate and inspire.

wwww.ftn-books.com has the catalog from the Stedelijk Museum with the Kinetic cover now available.

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Hanne Darboven (continued)

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Hanne Darboven behoorde tot de eerste generatie conceptuele kunstenaars. Voor haar waren getallen, classificatiesystemen en herhalingen middelen om te schrijven zonder te beschrijven. Haar seriële oeuvre heeft een romantisch, subjectief, bijna obsessief karakter en benadert de realiteit op een abstracte manier. Als een boekhouder probeerde Darboven dag na dag, vel na vel, boek na boek de tijd te overmeesteren of op z’n minst te meten in voor haarzelf functionele maar voor ons ondoorgrondelijke tijdsindelingen. Haar haast dwangneurotische werk vol cijfers, in woorden geschreven getallen en diagrammen omvat duizenden bladzijden.

www.ftn-books.com has some important Darboven titles available.

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Karl Gerstner (continued)

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Karl Gerstner (1930–2017) was a leading representative of Swiss typography and one of the most important innovators of typography, advertising graphics and corporate design. From 1945 to 1948, he completed an apprenticeship in Fritz Bühler’s studio and attended courses at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel, where Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder were his instructors. In 1949 he followed Max Schmid’s call and joined the legendary design team of Geigy Pharmaceuticals, where he later met the copywriter and editor Markus Kutter. In 1959 they founded the advertising agency Gerstner + Kutter, which was joined by architect Paul Gredinger and in 1963 became GGK (Gerstner Gredinger Kutter), one of Europe’s most successful advertising agencies. Gerstner left the agency in 1970 to focus on his art and on selected design projects. Karl Gerstner had a significant influence on Swiss typography and graphic design. As an artist, he developed a systematic language of colors and forms and pleaded for a correlation between art and everyday life and a functional and aesthetic design of the environment.

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Anish Kapoor (continued)

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Anish Kapoor stands out as a prominent sculptor, exerting immense influence within his generation. His notable works include public sculptures that encompass both daring forms and impressive engineering techniques, seamlessly navigating through varying scales and numerous series. His works range from vast PVC skins, stretched or deflated; concave or convex mirrors that beguile and engulf the onlooker; and recesses intricately carved from stone and pigmented to the point of disappearance. These voids and protrusions evoke deep-seated metaphysical dichotomies of presence and absence, concealment and revelation. Forms twist inwards, resembling the womb, while materials absorb color rather than being painted on, as though rejecting the concept of an external surface and beckoning the audience towards the depths of their imagination. In the early 1980s, Kapoor’s geometric forms rise from the ground, seemingly composed of pure pigment. In contrast, his blood-red wax sculptures from the last decade – animated and self-generating – ravage their own surfaces and shatter the tranquil atmosphere of the gallery. There are echoes of ancient world mythologies – Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman – blended with a contemporary flair.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Kapoor titles now available.

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Daan van Golden (continued)

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In his early work, Daan van Golden (Rotterdam, 1936) crafts expressive and abstract canvases, painted in black and white. The turning point comes when he embarks on a trip to Japan in 1962. From that moment on, motifs from everyday life become Van Golden’s starting point and he paints meticulously detailed handkerchiefs, tea towels, and wrapping paper. He uses Japanese lacquer paint, which causes the brushstroke to become almost invisible. A smooth surface is formed. Van Golden creates the straight line and checkerboard patterns by masking parts of the canvas with tape.

The motifs and patterns from everyday reality continue to appear in Van Golden’s oeuvre. Over time, in the 1970s and 1980s, his work is joined by pieces inspired by high and low culture and its various representatives. Van Golden quotes painters he admires by enlarging and recreating fragments of their work, and also portrays musicians and movie stars. Details from the oeuvres of Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, and Jackson Pollock make an appearance. Brigitte Bardot, Fats Domino, and Amadeus Mozart are just a few examples of icons featured in Van Golden’s work. In Blauwe studie naar Matisse (1982) he paints the parakeet from Matisse’s De parkiet en de zeemeermin (1952) on a large format – 188.5 by 118 centimeters. He uses a slide that he enlarges dramatically, giving the parakeet in his painting jagged contours.

Under the title Youth as an Art, Van Golden photographs his daughter Diana until she reaches eighteen. The photos also show the many places that Van Golden visits with his family, from trips to the United States to travels to Nepal, Mexico, Honduras, and India.

Van Golden studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (1954-1959). In 1999, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale. Van Golden’s work can be found in the collections of various renowned museums and galleries.