Category: conceptual

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Henri Jacobs (1957)

Since 2003, Henri Jacobs has been engaged in an ongoing series of drawings. These drawings, known as the Journal Drawings, originated from a project he undertook as a teacher. In this project, Jacobs instructed his students to depict anything that had a significant impact on them or caught their attention throughout a given day. Inspired by this exercise, he adopted it as a method for his own artistic practice, resulting in an ongoing collection of drawings. Within this series, he explores different motifs and forms, continuously abandoning them to make room for new research and experimentation.

Jacobs’s drawings showcase a virtuosic technique, skillfully executed yet playful. The images range from abstract geometric shapes and patterns to stylized portraits, landscapes, and architectural forms. Frequent allusions to art history and renowned artists such as Matisse and Jasper Johns also appear. Essentially, the Journal Drawings serve as a continual process of creative exploration, as Henri Jacobs constantly challenges himself to redefine and reinvent his drawings.

www.ftn-books.com has the van Abbemuseum catalog designed by Arlette Brouwers now available.

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Gerco de Ruijter ( 1961 )

Gerco de Ruijter is a Rotterdam-based visual artist working in the field of photography and film. In the late 1980s he started using kites, balloons and fishing poles to create images of situations far removed from our own vantage point. Since 2012 he has been mining Google Earth as a source, resulting in films like CROPS (2012) and Playground (2014). His art explores how far presentation of the landscape can be reduced and yet still remain recognisable.

De Ruijter studied at the Academy for Visual Arts in Rotterdam, graduating with honours in 1993. Since then he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, including at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, and The Harnett Museum of Art in Richmond. His work features in several important private and public collections.

www.ftn-books.com has the ALMOST NATURE now available .

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K.R.H. Sonderborg (1921-2008)

German Informel is closely associated with K.R.H. Sonderborg. Inspired by the gestural painting of American Abstract Expressionism, his paintings and drawings reveal a fascination with technical constructions and their traces of movement. It shows the form in its process of creation. In doing so, Sonderborg used a spontaneous application of paint. He thus created a dynamic structural system. His brushstrokes were rather strokes with the painting tool, executed in a quick gesture. His preferred colours were black and white with red elements, which he applied with a rubbing or wiping technique. From the 1970s onwards, his work increasingly approached a controlled, almost representational formal language. He limited himself to a few high-contrast colour tones, usually black on white. He distilled motifs from private and press photographs, isolating them from their narrative context and using them as a basic optical structure to inspire him. He remained true to his preference for technical constructions, whereby the graphic structure of car windscreen wipers and overhead cables inspired him just as much as harbour cranes or gas tanks. 

www.ftn-books.com has multiple Sonderborg publications available.

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Phil Bloom (1947)

Phil Bloom for the HOEPLA TV program

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:

https://archief.ntr.nl/jarenzestig/#/artikel/avant-garde-op-televisie

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

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A Willem Sandberg Xmas card

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.

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an old wish, but a new one from me….. a Merry Christmas 2021

 

Many Sandberg and Lubalin items are available at www.ftn-books.com

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Kurt Kocherscheidt (1943-1992)

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Kurt Kocherscheidt was born on the 6th of July 1943 in Klagenfurt, Austria to Friedrich and Elisabeth Mayer. After the divorce of his parents in 1946 and the move of his father back to Germany, the most formative person in his youth became his grandfather August Mayer (1885–1958) whose deep friendship with Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, a famous ethnographer and explorer, awakened Kocherscheidt’s interest in geography, zoology and art in general.

In 1961, after completion of his school years in Klagenfurt and Friesach (his mother’s hometown), Kocherscheidt moved to Vienna to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Sergius Pauser. As a way of supplementing his income, during the summers he would restore gothic frescos, in his words: “the thought of financial stability” led him to move to Zagreb (then Yugoslavia, now Croatia) for two years (1963–1964) to study mural painting under professor Ivo Rezek at the Akademija Likovnih Umjetnosti, before returning to Vienna and completing his academic studies in 1965.  In 1967 he married and divorced his long-time partner Andjelka Feuer.

In 1968 Kocherscheidt became a founding member of the artist group “Wirklichkeiten” (Realities). At a moment when the prevailing trend in art leaned towards conceptual art, these artists were bound by their interest in traditional modes of production, such as painting and drawing, and the representational qualities they favored. During this period, Kocherscheidt was predominantly painting highly saturated imagined landscapes that included both homages to real horticulture and surreal futuristic elements rendered in a palette that recalled the Fauves. The group included several painters who were of his generation and active in Vienna at the time, including: Wolfgang Herzig, Franz Ringel, Robert Zeppel-Sperl, Martha Jungwirth (who joined in 1969), and Peter Pongratz. The Kocherscheidt exhibition pposter for the JOsef Albersmuseum is now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Martijn Sandberg (1967)

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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

http://www.msandberg.nl/noimageavailable/

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 :

http://www.msandberg.nl/shop.php?shop=yes

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Centraal Museum Utrecht , 1979

 

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It is not the book itself, condition is fair+, but the realisation that all artists included in the book have become highly collectable artist, who’s works you can only acquire at steep prices nowadays. It shows the importance of collecting at an early stage by the museums. It is not difficult to pay millions for a work of art, but when you can see the quality at an early stage you can build a great collection…well done Centraal Museum.

the book is now available at www.ftn-books.com

abstract keus utrecht

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Who is Who ….in Modern Art, version 1995

For those who want a crash course in Modern Art it is sufficient to study the english/ Japanese catalogue RIPPLE ACROSS THE WATER . A  publication  with over 350 pages, published on the occasion of the exhibition with the same name  in 1995. Some names: Francis Bacon, Jan Fabre, Marlene Dumas, de Cordier, Nauman, Pistoletto etc……..

Not only very worth collecting, but also published as an artist book. This makes the publication an absolute ” must have ” for those that take an interest in Modern Art of the last 50 years.

 

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Henk Peeters and Paul Signac

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On first observation there is no relationship between Paul Signac and Henk Peeters, but after i had included a book on Paul Signac from the library of Henk Peeters to my inventory it was clear to me that Peeters must have had a great admiration for Signac and his Neo Impressionist friends.. The placing of the dots i compare to the placing of the cotton pads or feathers by Peeters on the Canvas.

I can be sure that this book comes from the library of Peeters , since it is signed in ink on the title page and has 2 stamps. The oldest being with his address Fahrenheitstraat 671 in Den Haag, the second his Arnhem address at the Hoogstedelaan 12. Just to illustrate:

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On the left signac’s enlarge part of the sky above Rotterdam and on the right a canvas by Peeters. The Signac book is now available at www.ftn-books.com