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Sandro Chia (1946)

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The very first time when i saw work by the Italian CHia was when he was presented together with contemporary artist from Italy presented at the Stedelijk Museum and i decided at that moment that fro me personally i liked the works by Chia the best. Not cucchi, not Clemente and not Palladino i liked most but the semi bombastic paintings by Chia  i liked most. They have a classical quality, but look very contemporary. Bright colors and filled with action his paintings still fascinate me.

chia sm a

Sandro Chia is an Italian painter and sculptor. A native of Florence, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with fellow countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, and Enzo Cucchi. The movement was at its peak during the 1980s and was part of a wider movement of Neo-Expressionist painters around the world.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Chia titles available.

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Burgoyne Diller (1906-1965)

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A pioneer of American modernism, Burgoyne Diller devoted his career to the exploration of geometric abstraction in paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptures.

For Diller, abstraction was the ideal realm of harmony, stability and order in which every form and spatial interval could be controlled and measured. His style began with forms of modernism, including cubism, Kandinsky’s abstraction, constructivism, and other European models.He simplified his palette to the bold colors and black and white of neoplasticism and reduced his visual vocabulary to squares and rectangles.” “Diller developed a highly personal language based on three major compositional themes. These themes, which he labeled “First,” “Second,” and “Third,” explored the picture plane in relation to forms in movement and forms in constant opposition. By 1934 Diller had likely become the earliest American exponent of Mondrian’s type of geometrical abstraction. In the early 1940s, he began creating wall-mounted wood constructions, and during the 1950s and 1960s his sculptures developed into the large-scale, free-standing, formica works for which he is well known.”

The Sullivan Goss Art Gallery notes the following about Diller’s style: “Composed predominantly of squares and rectangles and accented with primary colors against a solid white background, Diller’s mature abstract paintings are the result of his explorations of pure color and form. Diller’s austere work recalls the stinging isolation of the lives of all Americans of the Depression era, and possibly his own. However, the well-planned geometric nature of his paintings reveals his desire for a reconstructed world prevailing over the seemingly hopeless situation in the United States during the Depression

Above is the excellent text on Diller and his style of painting found on Wikipedia

www.ftn-books.com has some excellent and scarce Diller publications available

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van Gogh and Ruscha by David B.

It was a few days ago that David B. published on Facebook some photographs he had taken. Without knowing  where these were taken I immediately ralized that these could have been made some 50 even 120 years ago.

I refer to the Hollywood sign paintings by Ed Ruscha and the landscapes around Arles by Vincent van Gogh.

Without knowing, we have learned to look at objects, landscapes and forms like we are our own artists and  these observations must have influenced us in the way we look at the world around us and take and create our own art with the many pictures we nowadays can take with camera’s and phones. It even proves that art is important for those who have an open mind towards it. Learning from the art and artists they have encountered in museums and galeries, to create their own interprations of the world around them.

www.ftn-books.com has some very nice Ruscha and van Gogh titles available.

 

 

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Floor van Keulen added to the FTN art collection

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It was a long time on my wish list and ia finally could fullfill this wish. Since i met Floor van Keulen at the Haags Gemeentemuseum where he painted the  “Project room” at the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1989.

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His wall drawings are extremely large narratives. You can discover human figuren, weapons, books and landscapes all within the same wall painting/drawing. Connected with eachother by more figures and objects, resulting in an almost abstract painting, but with so many details that are realistic. His stand alone paintings are scarce. Most of the time lare/extremely large and where his small drawings are just sketches and exercises for the large wall drawings. His paintings on paper are true paintings. Where his wall drawings are most of the time removed or painted over. His large “paintings” are permanent and one of these , from 1987 , i now have added to the FTN art collection.

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The following text was found on the Piet Heen eek site and shows a different approach to his art.

Human figures and cartoons are the only motifs in the repertoire of drawings created by Floor van Keulen since 1980. They appear to be randomly spread across the surface, components of a well-balanced composition without any specific meaning. Shapes effortlessly melt into one another, debate with each other; emotions occasionally flare up, only to harmoniously merge together afterwards.

Floor van Keulen appears to shirk from the formal experiment, the abstract art experiment, in which realistic and figurative art that set the tone for hundreds of years is brushed aside as a truly relevant form. Van Keulen does not allow himself to be drawn into movements or trends within contemporary art. He has developed his own unique vision and confrontational visual language in which figurative depictions are interwoven with abstract shapes.

His art originates in his imagination and reality. He uses the ‘vocabulary’ he has put together through the years to formulate a vision of the world around him. The viewer encounters the virtuosity of the image and gets carried away in the painter’s exuberant gesture. On closer analysis of what it is exactly that affects the viewer so strongly, he or she first focuses on the pattern and motifs, attempting to decipher the artist’s story by interpreting the figurative elements. Only later does he or she discover that it is the work as a whole that is key here, the total emotion, not the details, form and contra-form. At first glance, the work appears to be expressive, but on closer inspection, clearly has a more subdued character and is carefully balanced and considered.

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Stedelijk Museum “on line” visits

Blog readers know of the large collection i have for sale on the Stedelijk Museum, its artists and its exhibitions ( www.ftn-books.com), but it is hard to grow this collection . No book markets, no museum visits and the only thing i could do is to photograph and describe my stock and add this to my inventory. It has now grown over by 1100 entries and i am convinced it is one of the largest collections for sale on the Stedelijk Museum and itss history. But to bridge the time between closure and reopening its collections to visitors, they made available some interesting virtual visits to the museum and its collections. Guided by curators and director Rein Wolfs , you can now make a virtual visit. One of the best i think is the one Rein Wolfs hosts. It shows the direction into which the Stedelijk is developing for the next decade or so. Interesting…. yes…., but i do hope they still will keep their focus on their history and great collection, they build over the years.

 

 

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Dirk Vander Eecken (1954)

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I was trying to find some information on the Belgian artist Dirk Vander Eecken when i stumbled upon a painting by this artist. The work was sold nearby at auction. SO there i was at the viewing day…..It was there high up in the shade and badly presented to the public, but i decided to take the gamble and made a bid and won.

Now i have it in my sudy. It is there, proudly standing against one of my bookcases and i am getting more and more impressed by its qualities. It is a combinbation of painted papers, prints and tissues worked into two sides which appear to have no relation which each other accept……. study it closely and you will see that in the background of the right part a part of the composition of the left part is still visible. The right part has been overprinted/painted with some wooden/organic/vegetal parts making the painting much more complex and appealing. This painting is now for sale at www.ftn-blog.com ( ftn art).

It measuers 200 x 100 cm. signed by Vander Eecken and its condition is still excellent. For a viewing appointment please contatc me at ftnbooksandart@gmail.com. Vander Eecken has had exhibitions all over Europe and his works are present in the collection of the SMAK, Mhka and many more.

eecken a

 

 

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Avery Preesman (1968)

 

Born in Willemstad Curacao, Avery Preesman was educated in the Netherlands. He entered the ATELIERS in 1992 without any pre education and because of his exceptional talent he soon received the second price in the Prix de Rome 1998 contest and in the same year the WOLVECAMPPRIJS. He became soon after a galerie artist of the famous ZENO X gallery in Antwerp and received solo exhibitions at the SMAK and Kunstlerhaus in Vienna and to end this lightning career of Preesman a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in 2001. Within a period of 9 years, Preesman had established himself as one of the leading contemporary artists in the Netherland. You can only admire such an artist. During the last 20 years , Preesman has been a regular contributor to the art and museum scene in Europe and beyond.

www.ftn-books.com has the 1999 NAi catalogue available. It is the catalogue which shows why Preesman has become so famous within a period of 10 years. He is a true natural.

preesman

 

 

 

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Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst (7)

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Following a relationship with art patron Peggy Guggenheim, Max Ernst went on to marry his fourth wife, Dorothea Tanning. The couple – who famously fell in love over a game of chess – is credited as pioneering the Surrealist movement. Despite this successful accomplishment, Manning insisted that the two “Never, never talked art. Never.” Married in a double ceremony in Hollywood with Man Ray and Juliet Browner, the pair enjoyed surrounding themselves with other artists. Often, they would entertain the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson in their home in France, seemingly thriving among fellow creatives. Dipping between Surrealism, Dadaism and everything in between, the pair continued their separate artistic practices and maintained a healthy marriage until Ernst’s death in 1976.

There are several Max Ernst publications available at www.ftn-books.com

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Gilbert & George (3)

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Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore

Just like a scene from your favourite rom-com, Gilbert and George first locked eyes in the halls of Central Saint Martins in 1967, where the two studied sculpture. Dubbing the encounter as love at first sight, the duo collaborated on both 3D as well as 2D works – although they would continue to refer to all artworks as sculpture. Exploring themes of religion, sexuality and identity across a wide range of media, Gilbert and George have stayed relevant beyond the confines of the elitist art. They married in 2008, having spent over 4 decades together in the art world that they collectively rebel against.

www.ftn-books.com has many Gilbert & George titles available

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Katharina Duwe and Johannes Duwe (1)

Because of the publication KUNST IM LANDTAG: PAARE on Katharina and Johannes Duwe I was inspired to devote a series of blogs to famous artist couples. Here is the first one. Not so famous this couple, but at the time of the publication ( available at www.ftn-books.com) presented as an artist couple at the DER LANDTAG venue. Of these two i have a personal preference….of these two i like Katharina over Johannes, but both have their own qualities.

Johannes Duwe was born in 1956 and was primarily inspired by the 1970s. Conceptualism is often perceived as a response to Minimalism, and the dominant art movement of the 1970s, challenging the boundaries of art with its revolutionary features. The movements that ensued were all representative of a strong desire to progress and consolidate the art world, in response to the tensions of the previous 1960s. Process art branched out from Conceptualism, featuring some of its most essential aspects, but going further in creating mysterious and experimental artistic journeys, while Land Art brought creation to the outsides, initiating early philosophies of environmentalism. In Germany, Expressive figure painting was given a second chance for the first time since the decline of Abstract Expressionism almost two decades, the genre regained its distinction through the brushstrokes of Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. The cosmopolitan and refined position that New York city held in the 1960s remained just as influential in the 1970s. With multiple international renowned artists gravitating the galleries and downtown scene, the city once again strengthened its reputation as the artistic hub of the era. Across the globe, numerous movements defined the 1970s. Amongst others, feminism and the new radical philosophies it occasioned strongly influenced the visual culture. Photorealism, which had emerged in the 1960s, also received critical and commercial success. The critical, prominent artistic pillars of New York city started to embrace painters and sculptors from Latin America.

duwe paare