Category: antiquarian books

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Anita Groener ( 1958)

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The first impression was Jakob Gasteiger, but certainly this is not the case….. there is much more to the work of Anita Groener. The swirls and lines look like Gasteiger but there is much more depth in her paintings. She uses small dots and lines to accentuate the lines making these much stronger than expected. Born in the Netherlands she now lives in Dublin/Ireland and making a name for herself in Ireland. Here is the info on her i found on her artist site.: www.anitagroener.com

Asking what it is to be human today, Anita Groener explores the substance of trauma and loss rooted in this question. She makes work for what needs language, experimenting with both figurative and abstract geographies. The artist focuses on specific current events, their archetypal and psychological resonances, tracing urgent connections between people driven from their homes through armed, economic or political conflict and her own life and family. The deliberately modest means of Groener’s installations and line drawings—twigs, cut paper, straight pins, gouache, twine—speak to the fragility of life and society that refugee crises expose. Her art implicates herself and us, asking questions about the ethics of witnessing and aesthetic response.
Anita Groener was born in The Netherlands and is based in Dublin, Ireland. In 2005, she was elected a member of Aosdána, the prestigious official association of Ireland’s preeminent cultural producers. Until 2014 she was a professor at the Dublin Institute of Technology where she was also the Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006.
www.ftn-books.com has one title available on Groener
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Sérgio Camargo (1930-1990)

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Camargo was an almost forgotten sculptor until there was a sudden raise of interest in Brazilian art in the Nineties. This meant that his works were considered to be important for the development in Modern Art and sculpture in Brasil. When you look at the studio pictures in the books that is for sale at www.ftn-books.com, you will soon conclude that Camargo was inspired by Brancusi and Chillida, but still there is so much of his own .

Where Brancusi was inspired by nature, Camargo is much more inspired by the minimal forms. It has been over 20 years now that the last show took place in Europe. Time again to present Camargo again and put his works into context with European and minimal sculptors.

The Nineties catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Jacques Tardi (1946)

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One of the iconic creators of great (french) comics is undoubtedly Jacques Tardi. Tardi managed to find the balance between classic comics/BD ( Bandes dessinee), graphic novel and Art. His series on Adele Blanc-Sec are among the very best in comic art from the last half century, but beside the series of ordinary BD’s he produced some great adaptations of “classic” french literature. Tardi successfully adapted novels by controversial writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline and crime novelist Léo Malet. In Malet’s case, Tardi adapted his detective hero Nestor Burma into a series of critically acclaimed graphic novels, though he also wrote and drew original stories of his own.

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With a style of comic art, highly recognizable and very much a style of his own, Tardi crossed the border into the world of art and his pages of comics are now sold in galeries all over the world. www.ftn-books.com has some very nice Tardi publications available.

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Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975)

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Madeleine Vionnet….one of the great fashion designers from last century and by far the most gifted of couturiers according to Ietse Mey,  former curator of the Kostuummuseum in the Netherlands. At one time she explained that the reason why Vionnet has been so important for the world of fashion is that she had a special way of cutting the fabrics.

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She became known for clothes that accentuated the natural female form. Influenced by the modern dances of Isadora Duncan, Vionnet created designs that showed off a woman’s natural shape. Like Duncan, Vionnet was inspired by ancient Greek art, in which garments appear to float freely around the body rather than distort or mold its shape. Her style changed relatively little over her career, although it became a little more fitted in the 1930s.[6]

In the 1920s, Vionnet had created a stir by developing garments utilizing the bias cut, a technique for cutting cloth diagonal to the grain of the fabric, enabling it to cling to the body while stretching and moving with the wearer. While Vionnet herself did not invent the method of cutting fabric on the bias, she was the first to utilize bias cuts for the entirety of a garment.

www.ftn-books.com has 2 publications on Madeleine Vionnet available. One by Ietse Mey

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Stephan Fritsch (1962-2014)

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It is impossible to know every artist that ever had a gallery or museum presentation in the last 50 years or so. But sometimes you encounter work by an artist in a way you did not expect an artist who you did not know of, but who fascinates with the first works you see. In this case i had bought a lot of mainly German books on German artists , because i wanted to have the two titles on Richard Schur included in the lot. I had the winning aftersale bid and bought together with the Schur books, books ( all sealed) on other German contemporary abstract painters. One of them Stephan Fritsch.

For me an unknown painter, but with a fascinating approach to his abstract expressionist art. His works reminded me somehow of the ones i had seen in the past by Kirkeby, but where Kirkeby has a link with nature, i only see abstracttion in the works by Fritsch and …..COLOR!

Still Fritsch is a painter to get to know and to explore , however i also learned that he died in 2014 and now it is unfortunate that he died at such a young age and only leaves us a limited amount of works.

The Stephan Fritsch book is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Sam Francis (continued) and Nico Delaive

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As long as i remember i encountered the works by Sam Francis at the gallery Nico Delaive. From the early days of Swatch specials  (Sam Francis special) and the space occupied by Nico Delaive together with Art Unlimited the publisher i took an interest in Sam Francis  and even now , many years later,  i am always keen on the publications by Sam Francis. The copy that i recently added to my inventory is a rare one. Only 1500 copies worldwide of which not many will be on the market. The copy is now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Moreno Bondi (1959)

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Moreno Bondi, just another name i encountered in a book…..a beautiful book, large sized excellent printing, but with one problem….i never had heard of Bondi, so i bought the book and looked into it and it did make me curious to find out more on the artist. At first he reminded me of Poen de Wijs, but there is more to the artist. It appears he organizes visits to his studio in Rome and explains his art to the visitors. Whenever i go to Rome this is certainly high on my list of wishes. Sizes are not the normal size of paintings but size starts at 150 x 150 cm. Really

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impressive paintings. Oil paintings of nude men and women enhanced by marble abstract sculptures is something in which he excels. www.ftn-books.com has now the Moreno Bondi book for sale.

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Thijs Rinsema (1877-1947)

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This Frysian artist is by most known for his DADA works he made in te beginning of his career, but he searched for a much wider appreciation and therefore changed his style into a much more figurative style.

Far less interesting, but probably a necessary step to survive as an artist. I looked into the history of Rinsema and found some interesting works which are still exhibited in the Museums in the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands, but the best exhibition was held a long time ago at the Nijmeegs Museum in 1972 for which exhibition an excellent catalogue was published , designed by Harrie Gerritz who found a loyal following of admirers soon after for his playfulk and colourful abstract compositions. This catalogue is available at ww.ftn-books.com

This catalogue is a cclassic for the Sixties and Seventies with sobre style, minimalistic designdoes it stand as a great dutch design.

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Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919)

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A sculptor, not that very well known outside Germany, but a sculptor who nevertheless has its own museum. The Wilhelm Lehmbruck museum in Duisburg has a nice collection, but the Lehmbruck name is kept alive by practically all large museums in Germany.

Personally i do not know the fascination , because in my opinion Lehmbruck has not freed himself of making classical sculptures. He did not make the full transition into modern sculpture as for instance Giacometti did. Perhaps this is explained from the short life he had and he did not have the time to develop himself completely. If you look at that way, Lehmbruck took the first steps into modern sculpture but never had the time to complete his ideas on modern sculpture. www.ftn-books.com has some nice Lehmbruck publications available.

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Franco Pinna (1925-1978)

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Without knowing who the photographer was i have encountered , many, many photographs by Pinna in the time i read the PARIS MATCH. Studying french i had to read the language, which meant that i bought weekly the Paris Match. Pinna’s photographs are easily recognizable and have a signature of their own.

He was born in La Maddalena, on July 29, 1925. In 1952 he moved to Rome and, after a brief experience as a cinedocumentary operator, constituted the cooperative Fotografi Associati together with Plinio De Martiis, Caio Mario Garrubba, Nicola Sansone, Pablo Volta, which was dissolved in 1954 due to economic difficulties. He followed the anthropologist Ernesto De Martino during several research expeditions in southern Italy (Lucania, 1952, 1956, 1959, Salento 1959), obtaining documents of great artistic and cultural value. In 1959 he published his first book, entitled La Sila, which was followed by Sardegna una civiltà di pietra (Sardinia, a stone civilization) (1961). Meanwhile, his photos appear in the magazines Life, Stern, Sunday Times, Vogue, Paris Match, Epoca, L’espresso, Panorama. From 1965 Pinna became the trusted photographer of Federico Fellini and made scene photos of his films Giulietta degli spiriti, 1965, up to Fellini’s Casanova in 1976; he also publishes some photo books (I Clowns, Fellini’s Film) inspired by his films. He died suddenly in Rome on April 2, 1978.

www.ftn-books.compinna has a nice italian publication on Pinna available.