Wolfgang Laib was born in 1950 in Metzingen, Germany. Inspired by the teachings of the ancient Taoist philosopher Laozi, by the modern artist Brancusi, and the legacy of formative life experiences with his family in Germany and India, Laib creates sculptures that seem to connect that past and present, the ephemeral and the eternal. Working with perishable organic materials (pollen, milk, wood, and rice) as well as durable ones that include granite, marble, and brass, he grounds his work by his choice of forms—squares, ziggurats, and ships, among others.
His painstaking collection of pollen from the wildflowers and bushes that grow in the fields near his home is integral to the process of creating work in which pollen is his medium. This he has done each year over the course of three decades. Laib’s attention to human scale, duration of time, and his choice of materials give his work the power to transport us to expected realms of memory, sensory pleasure, and contemplation.
www.ftn-books.com has added some collectable Laib titles recently.
Subject to tumultuous moments in history, Wifredo Lam saw the peaks and valleys of the human condition. Skilled with an avant-garde paintbrush, his works have become a pinnacle of Cuban art. Exercising European education and a proclivity for the Afro-Caribbean culture together in an iconic yet familiar aesthetic, Lam shattered artistic stereotypes and effectively sucker-punched the cultural commodification happening in Cuba at the time.
Fighting in the Spanish Civil War and fleeing Germany in the 1940s, Lam not only experienced major conflicts of the 20th century, but he also artistically cavorted with some the era’s greatest artists from Matisse to Picasso. Deeply influenced by Picasso, when Lam first saw the modern master’s works, he proclaimed that they weren’t just a revelation, but a “shock”. Having taken Lam under his wing and championing him around Europe, Picasso’s unique style is quite vivid within Lam’s later works: surreal figures projecting almost shattering emotions and a puzzle of hodgepodge cubism with an almost other-dimensional magnetism.
But with his historical and spiritual roots firmly planted in the Cuban soil, Lam brought the spirit of the island alive, painting the struggle and passion of the Afro-Caribbean culture. With his grandmother a former Congolese slave and his godmother a priestess of Santeria, Lam, like his paintings, had a free-flow of rich and vibrant intertwining stories in his background. Doing as a true artist does, Lam stuck his finger in all the artistic pies when he returned to Cuba in 1941. Befriending anthropologists, poets and the like, Lam immersed himself deeply in the African culture of Cuba and got rather swept away by the rhythm of the ceremonial drums. His fascination and deep respect for the history manifested itself famously in his magnum opus, The Jungle. His work reflects the capitalisation of heritage with the almost magic realism of the African elements:
The history of subjugation and commodification in the colonial realm is seen in the sugar cane background, Santeria and systems of belief through the African mask-like faces, and the direct human connection is visualised via exposed bodies and famous round backsides. The ethnographic forest captured the swirling spirit of the country: the nature, the history, the people, the religions – all that made Cuba distinct and colourful. MoMA would eventually buy the painting and display it next to Picasso’s Les Demoisell d’Avignon, but in its physical aesthetic and power of imagery to embody the struggle of the people, perhaps it would have been better placed next to Guernica.
Although his work bears a striking resemblance to Picasso’s style, Lam’s cultural and geographic heritage was deeply intertwined with the “magic realist” genre that sprung up in Latin America in the 1940s. A beautiful weaving narrative of imagination, beauty, and almost crushing human realities blended with African metaphysical rhythm. A visionary, Lam brought Cuban art into modernity through the beat of the drum of the past. www.ftn-books.com has now the ultimate book on Wifredo Lam available. It is the Poligrafa/ Fouchet book
Frank Fischer is an artist who was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and now lives and works in The Hague, Holland. Fischer makes ultra-glossy linear artworks on an aluminium surface. The artworks are inspired by real masterpieces by world famous artists.
He uses the image of such a masterpiece to edit it on the computer and to stretch the image. What remains of the image is a kind of bar code where only the colour of the existing artwork can be recognised. Frank Fischer uses this barcode to create his own artwork by dripping down glossy paint, drop by drop, colour after colour.
This process is incredibly precise and time consuming, especially since the end of the top and bottom need much time to dry. When they are dried the ends look like stalactites of colour.
Recently he devoted a series to the paintings of the Mauritshuis. The series was executed in his new The Hague studio and exhibited at gallery Project 20
Two female artists that both have/had careers in Art, but both not very well known. The reason I present these artists together is the TWEE KIUNSTENARESSEN publication that I now have for sale at www.ftn-books.com. Schoonheyt is know for her Indonesian inspired paintings and large installations with mirrors at the Fodor Museum and Els Timmermans for colorful highly personal paintings and of course that she was married to Peter van Straten with whom she made the illustrated book ” OMA KATTENPIS”. Personally, I prefer the works by Timmermans. The early works depicted in the catalog of the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem remind me in some way of the abstract paintings by Hussem.
In my 2020 blog on Sleeuwenhoek i mentioned that i wanted to acquire a Sleeuwenhoek for our collection and…. now after many years we have managed to do so. We acquired a gouache and a silkscreen. The gouache is now hanging in an appropriate place and the large silkscreen is now for sale. If interested please contact me at wilfriedvandenelshout@gmail.com.
Many dutch and almost all soccer fans worldwide know the name of Johan Cruijff. In the mid seventies Jits Bakker made an action sculpture of Johan Cruijff which has become quite famous among soccer fans and art lovers alike. But beside this sculpture the works of Jits Bakker are so much more. They have one quality in common…..these all show action and movement, making these recognizable. Dancers. musicians, cyclist all are depicted in action and none static nor posing. . Jits Bakker knew how to express himself in bronze, making him , together with Kees Verkade , one of the dutch sculptures whose quality is recognised by many art collector.
The JIts Bakker published BEWEGING BETRAPT IN BRONS is now available at www.ftn-books.com
At first glance the paintings of Masha Trebukova (*1962) appear to be purely abstract – colourful forms of various shades and shapes on canvas. They smoothly flow into each other or collide in sharp counteraction, whirling around and collapsing at their climax. As if some cosmic powers were struggling on the painted surface, but yet some familiar reality does transpire from this non-figurative battle. The colour blue – at the top or at the bottom of the painting – can suddenly turn into a pool of enticing water or of endless skies, vibrating silver–pink openings become atmospheric matter pierced by light. Sometimes these forms acquire a three-dimensional quality of a lump of rock (whereas in the earlier works they were reminiscent rather of landscapes), increasing the effect of depth. In this way masters like Willem de Kooning and Nicolas de Stael worked on the borderline of abstraction and reality in the middle of last century..
She finds her own solutions to the eternal problem of painting – the relationship between flatness and depth. New materials are added to the traditional technique of oil painting. Pieces of dyed gauze, rough jute, leather or transparent interfacing fabric when applied to canvas bring new possibilities for resolving this age old problem. A lower layer of colour shines through painted gauze and creates a feeling of depth, but perpendicular brush strokes, much like Cezanne’s, bring remote images back to the foreground flatness of the canvas, surface breaks into endless space, and abstraction “becomes” reality..
The same idea lies at the basis of her printmaking. She prepares cardboard sheets with glue and sand and uses these forms for printing monotypes, sometimes arranging several parts together and creating polypthychs, at times 2 x 3 meters large. On paper as well as on canvas Masha confronts in the first place purely artistic problems: colour balance, the relationship between form and structure, tension and attraction of elements. But a certain reality appears by itself, breaking through the rational calculations, oozing out from sub- consciousness, coming from the deep natural bond of the artist with the real world. Such a combination of the rational and the spontaneous is not easily achieved, it is the result of mature masterly work.
Luut de Gelder (1942) studied, together with Eja Siepman van den Berg, at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. De Gelder has always remained true to herself and her own ideas. It is therefore hard to find an outside influence, from teachers or fellow students, in her work. De Gelder is a true stonemason, but also models sculptures to be cast in bronze. While cutting in a stone, she enters into a dialogue with the material. She has used one theme for her entire life: the female fragment, the woman’s lap. Her work is characterised by this specific theme, as well as contrast in the stone. These contrasts are often to be found in the finishing, in the skin of the material. Some parts of the sculpture remain rugged and unpolished, others have been made even and soft to emphasise the vulnerability of the lap.
www.ftn-books.com has the HET DEPOT publication available.
Last week we acquired an impressive work by Janpeter Muilwijk. Beside the 3 larger works we now have acquired a large silkscreened one from an edition of 30 copies. Numbered signed and a typical work from his earliest years. Linda and I are still fond of his works. They have a quality that I can not find among other artists from his generation. This is the work which is now for sale.
Richard Prince (born 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. He began copying other photographers’ work in 1977. His image, Untitled (Cowboy), a rephotographing of a photograph by Sam Abell and appropriated from a cigarette advertisement, was the first rephotograph to be sold for more than $1 million at auction at Christie’s New York in 2005. He is regarded as “one of the most revered artists of his generation” according to the New York Times.
Starting in 1977, Prince photographed four photographs which previously appeared in the New York Times. This process of rephotographing continued into 1983, when his work Spiritual America featured Garry Gross’s photo of Brooke Shields at the age of ten, standing in a bathtub, as an allusion to precocious sexuality and to the Alfred Stieglitz photograph by the same name. His Jokes series (beginning 1986) concerns the sexual fantasies and sexual frustrations of white, middle-class America, using stand-up comedy and burlesque humor.
After living in New York City for 25 years, Prince moved to upstate New York. His mini-museum, Second House, purchased by the Guggenheim Museum, was struck by lightning and burned down shortly after the museum purchased the House (which Richard had created for himself), having only stood for six years, from 2001 to 2007. In 2008 the painting ‘Overseas Nurse’ from 2002 fetched a record-breaking $8,452,000 at Sotheby’s in London. Prince now lives and works in New York City.
Richard Prince was born on August 6, 1949, in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, now part of the Republic of Panama. During an interview in 2000 with Julie L. Belcove, he responded to the question of why his parents were in the Zone, by saying “they worked for the government.” When asked further if his father was involved in the military, Prince responded, “No, he just worked for the government.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that Prince’s parents worked for the Office of Strategic Services in the Panama Canal before he was born. Prince later lived in the New England city of Braintree, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and Provincetown on Cape Cod. In 1973, he moved to New York and joined publishing company Time Inc. His job at the Time Inc. library involved providing the company’s various magazines with tear sheets of articles.
Prince was first interested in the art of the American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. “I was very attracted to the idea of someone who was by themselves, fairly antisocial, kind of a loner, someone who was noncollaborative.” Prince grew up during the height of Pollock’s career, making his work accessible. The 1956 Time magazine article dubbing Pollock “Jack the Dripper” made the thought of pursuing art as career possible. After finishing high school in 1967, Prince set off for Europe at age 18.
He returned home and attended Nasson College in Maine. He describes his school as without grades or real structure. From Maine moved to Braintree, Massachusetts, and for a brief time lived in Provincetown. Ultimately he was drawn to New York City. Prince has said that his attraction to New York was instigated by the famous photograph of Franz Kline gazing out the window of his 14th Street studio. Prince described the picture as “a man content to be alone, pursuing the outside world from the sanctum of his studio.”
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
