Category: ftn art

Here is the collection of works of art by FTN art. These are all guaranteed original  works, signed and dated by the artist from my personal collection and the inventory of ftn-books.

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Klaas Gubbels (continued)

When creating his paintings, Gubbels assigns an almost character-like personality to the coffee pot – which he usually refers to as a kettle. It can be seen sitting on a chair at a table or meeting other brightly colored kettles within the two-dimensional space of the canvas. The physical characteristics of the coffee pot vary: a double handle, heart-shaped, multiple spouts, and even legs. Gubbels states that he wants to break the monotony. Hence, the subject matter remains the same, yet the resulting work is always different. Gubbels explains it as follows when talking about his series of “Super boring still lifes”: “I purposely want to turn the dullness around. So that the boredom becomes something.”

Gubbels carefully considers what to erase and what to leave in. He ponders whether or not to remove the charcoal lines that sometimes run alongside the outlines of the painted shapes. He is not interested in making a painting more aesthetically pleasing. “Stupid, strict rules” – in Gubbels’ own words – hold him back from doing so. A painting should remain as it is; aesthetics should not be a guiding principle.

The limited number of subjects that Gubbels uses as a starting point consist mainly of a table, coffee pot, chair, cup, and occasionally a bottle or funnel. They are sometimes painted in bright blue or flaming red, and other times in more subdued shades of gray.

Aside from paintings, Gubbels also creates prints and sculptures. He studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam (1951-1952) and continued his education at the art academy in Arnhem (1952-1958). Exhibitions of his work have been shown at Museum Arnhem, Paleis Soestdijk (Baarn), and Livingstone Gallery (The Hague), among others.

www.ftn-books.com has several Gubbels items available.

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Robert Combas (continued)

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If all goes according to plan, we will be fully operational again on November 21st, but until then, it may happen that we are unable to immediately assist you with your order. We ask for your understanding, but as soon as possible, your order will be fulfilled with the utmost speed

During the early 1980s, Robert Combas introduced a new form of figurative painting that left a lasting impact on the art scene. His pioneering work in the movement dubbed “Figuration Libre” by Ben Vautier brought together other notable artists such as Rémi Blanchard, François Boisrond, and Hervé Di Rosa.

Inspired by a sense of freedom, this art form boldly depicts various aspects of society such as violence, sexuality, human suffering, and simple pleasures. It also sheds light on societal flaws and narrow-mindedness, as well as moments of greatness.

Influenced by rock culture, popular imagery, childhood literature, school textbooks, and all that defines popular culture accessible to the masses, my approach sometimes involves using abstract techniques, reminiscent of abstract expressionism. However, the humorous and down-to-earth side of me is reflected in the figurative aspect of my work. It was initially a response to the intellectual paintings of the mid-seventies. Growing up in a working-class background and navigating through two different worlds, my paintings hold a deeper meaning. They exude a sense of boundless energy and offer a glimpse into my unrestricted creativity. Unlike cartoons, where one must adhere to set characters, my paintings grant me complete freedom – even with the format.

www.ftn-books.com has a special selection of books on Combas available.

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Dan Flavin (continued)

Dan Flavin, an iconic minimalist artist from America, gained fame for his unconventional approach to creating sculptures and installations using easily accessible fluorescent light fixtures.

Flavin was a visionary artist of the 20th century, renowned for his fusion of minimalism and Op art. He was best known for his unique technique of utilizing only fluorescent lights as his medium, obtained from commercial sources. These readymade lights consisted of four standard lengths and ten different colors, including four variations of white. Flavin’s focus was not only on the use of light as a material, but also on its ability to transform and interact with the surrounding space.

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

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Marcel van Eeden (continued)

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If all goes according to plan, we will be fully operational again on November 21st, but until then, it may happen that we are unable to immediately assist you with your order. We ask for your understanding, but as soon as possible, your order will be fulfilled with the utmost speed.

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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If all goes according to plan, we will be fully operational again on November 21st, but until then, it may happen that we are unable to immediately assist you with your order. We ask for your understanding, but as soon as possible, your order will be fulfilled with the utmost speed.

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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Jesus Rafael Soto (continued)

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In the coming weeks we will be occupied with packing and moving our internet store inventory. The entire collection needs to be transferred from Leidschendam to Oegstgeest, and this will take some time.
If all goes according to plan, we will be fully operational again on November 21st, but until then, it may happen that we are unable to immediately assist you with your order. We ask for your understanding, but as soon as possible, your order will be fulfilled with the utmost speed.

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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If all goes according to plan, we will be fully operational again on November 21st, but until then, it may happen that we are unable to immediately assist you with your order. We ask for your understanding, but as soon as possible, your order will be fulfilled with the utmost speed.

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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Jannis Kounellis (continued)

Jannis Kounellis, a painter and sculptor hailing from Greece and Italy, emerged as one of the pioneering figures of the Arte Povera movement. He passed away in Rome on the 16th of February, 2017.

Born in Piraeus, Greece in 1936, Kounellis experienced the devastation of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War before relocating to Rome in 1956 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts.

His artistic repertoire flourished exponentially throughout the 1960s, with Kounellis primarily exhibiting paintings from 1960 to 1966. He infused found objects, such as street signs, into his work, utilizing stenciled symbols that reflected the contemporary society he lived in – numbers, letters, and words. Moreover, he even incorporated his artworks into performances, often wearing them as garments. This fusion of painting, sculpture, and performance marked Kounellis’ departure from traditional art and solidified his significance in the development of Arte Povera.

In 1967, Kounellis showcased his work in the ‘Arte Povera – e IM Spazio’ exhibition at the La Bertesca Gallery in Genoa, curated by Germano Celant. This event cemented Kounellis’ association with Arte Povera, a movement that rejected conventional flat surfaces in favor of installations and performances. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Kounellis participated in numerous influential Arte Povera exhibitions, constantly introducing “found” materials – like bed frames, doorways, windows, and raw materials like wool and rope – into his art.

Kounellis devotedly continued to create and exhibit his work throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, with his pieces frequently showcased in prominent events like Documenta (1972, 1977, 1982), the Venice Biennale (1972, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1998, 1993, and 2011), Tate Modern Gallery in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. To this day, countless retrospectives have been held to celebrate Kounellis’ extensive body of work.

www.ftn-books.com has several Kounellis books now available.

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Antonio Calderara ( continued)

Antonio Calderara, born in 1903 in Abbiategrasso, Italy, continued to create until his passing in 1978. Living a solitary existence in Northern Italy, he found inspiration in the luminosity of the nearby landscapes, particularly Lake Orta. Calderara possessed an enigmatic complexity that defied any strict categorization in the art world. Despite meeting numerous Italian and foreign artists during his lifetime, he maintained his personal freedom and individuality in his expression.

A self-taught artist from a young age, Calderara later received guidance from Lucio Fontana. His earliest influences included the figuration and manipulation of light by Piero della Francesca, Seurat, and Milanese Novecento painters. In 1925, after abandoning his engineering studies at university, he dedicated himself fully to experimenting with color and form. Through his depictions of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, he captured the essence of his homeland, suffused with a delicate, ethereal light inspired by the atmospheric glow of Lake Orta in Vacciago. This served as his home base since 1934, when he moved there with his wife Carmela, and where he continued to work for the majority of his life.

In the mid-1950s, Calderara began to depart from representational painting and embraced a more geometric approach. This shift dramatically reduced both the size and elements in his compositions. Despite this, his essential vocabulary of clean lines and squares, refined color palette, and precise measurements aligned him with other minimalist painters of the time, such as Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers, whom the artist greatly admired. In explaining his sudden transition to abstraction, Calderara wrote, “In 1958…I drew my last curved line.”

It is his abstract period that Calderara is most renowned for. His abstract paintings from the late 1950s and 1960s fuse geometric abstraction with a hazy finish, creating a misty quality through subtle, almost imperceptible variations in color.

www.ftn-books.com has some beautiful titles on Calderara now available.

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David Robilliard (continued)

Born in Guernsey (GB), passed away in London (GB).

David Robilliard skillfully traversed the line between art and comedy. The self-taught, Guernsey-born artist relocated to London in the late 1970s and forged his own brand of visual poetry, intertwining clever phrases, stylized figures, poignant contemplations on sexuality, companionship, and the urban experience onto blank canvases.

Robilliard was a prominent figure during a pivotal time in both London’s art culture and the emergence of the city’s LGBTQ+ community. Gilbert & George praised their protege and assistant as “the new master of the Modern individual. Observing, pondering, sensing, perceiving, sarcastically commenting – he brilliantly captures the “Existers” ethos of our era.” However, he never took himself too seriously.

David Robilliard contracted AIDS, ultimately leading to his passing at the young age of 36.

www.ftn-books.com has the most important publications now available.

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