Category: Geen categorie

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Paul Kooiker (1964)….continued

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A few years ago i devoted a blog to Paul Kooiker of whom i have several publications available. Among these is the Hotel New York publication,  but this time i publish this blog to announce the sale of an original photograph by Paul Kooiker.

Kooiker is one of the leading photographers in the Netherlands these days and it is a rare opportunity to sell anoriginal signed photograph. One from the series i keep for my own collection but the one below is for sale:

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It is a great Paul Kooiker photograph. The setting and the models are typical for Kooiker and used in many series oof which some of the books are available at www.ftn-books.com

 

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Piet Klaasse ( 1918 – 2001 )

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My first encounter with work by Piet Klaasse was the time i bought a book on music, illustrated by Piet Klaasse. It certainly was not my kind of art i was interested in, but later i saw the quality of his illustrations. Specially his drawings and paintings of horses are of a rare quality. I compared his work with Rien Poortvliet’s but where Poortvliet tells a story with his illustrations, Klaasse doesn’t. HIs works stand as individual works of art and each tell  a story of their own and are much more mature than those by Poortvliet. I will never buy a Klaasse for my collection but i know of people very much interested in his works. For those …know that www.ftn-books.com has the famous PIET KLAASSE TEKENT PAARDEN in its inventory.

 

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Wim Crouwel and the van Abbemuseum

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Before Wim Crouwel became the main designer for all publications published by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in in the 60’s, 70’s and early Eighties (TD). There was a short 4 years that he made some beautiful publications for the van Abbemuseum Eindhoven. In these you can recognize the early Wim Crouwel. Size, use of multiple ( colored) papers, typography and layout are all typical for the early Wim Crouwel. www.ftn-books.com is fortunate to have a nice selection of these early WimCrouwel designed publications. Pictures tell a better story than words can . In this case , this certainly true. So here are some nice van Abbemuseum publications by Wim Crouwel.

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Gijs Bakker … a dutch design genius

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https://www.nowness.com/series/on-design/on-design-gijs-bakker

Most of us have some a little knowledge of the designs by Gijs Bakker, because Bakker designed many “objects to use ” for the HEMA company. An excellent example is his dishmop in bright and happy colors.

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This is just a small example of the many products Bakker designed and made with his designs a beautiful design product available to many at a reasonable price. Furniture, jewelry, books, posters and kitchenware all items that at one time were designed by Gijs bakker. 010 publishers published an excellent monography on Bakker. Title : OBJECTS TO USE ..This book is still available at www.ftn-books.com.

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Art prices… gallery versus auction

auke de vries gele labels

Today i added to my inventory a book by Auke de Vries for his Museum Wiesbaden exhibition from 1990. i knew the title and had sold copies before, but what made this one special is that on ca. 10 of the pages yellow post-it’s were fixed with gallery prices in guilders. I leafed through the book and was surprised to find the prices to be as steep as 50.000 guilders. It was not long ago that i attended 2 auctions where several small and larger sculptures by Auke de Vries were sold , fetching prices between euro 2500 and 4000 for a larger sculpture.

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I compared these with the 1990 gallery prices within the Wiesbaden catalogue and found that prices had devaluated with over 60% when compared with the actual auction prices including premium in 2017. Of course the gallery fees are  between 40 and 50%, but when you consider that money has devaluated too in these past two and a half decades the devaluation of Modern Art of a very good artist like Auke de Vries is over 80% compared with the original gallery price. Should i then still buy art?……YES! because you can have tremendous pleasure from it. You search for and find good art and enjoy it at home when you bought or rent it and yes… you support the artist with your buy, but if you ask me , should i buy art as an investment? my advise would be …be careful for the artist you select, because most of them will not be worth very much after a few decades.

But when you are patient, that means a period of 20+ years, you will discover that works by the artist you admire start to appear at auction and are much more affordable and even can be bought by most collectors for as little as a few hundred euro.  I can give you an example of a great Arie van Geest which recently was added to our collection for an extremely fair amount.

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You only learn of the auction records by artist like Warhol, Koons and Hirst, but you can ask yourself…are these works by these artists really that special or are they a marketing product… a true hype? if i did not know who the artist is and  did not know the value of a work …would i buy it ? In the case of Auke de Vries i personally would do so at the price level that i recently experienced at auction, but for the prices in the Wiesbaden catalogue i would “pass”. Art should not be bought as an investment and i dare say that the great collectors in the world never have bought art for its value, but because they admire the artist and his or her works and you should do the same, because there is still some great art to be found and bought at fair prices. www.ftn-blog.com and www.ftn-books.com have art for sale which is published in edition and is still affordable.

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Vassilakis Takis (1925)

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Day 4 of my “forgotten artists” blogs is devoted to Vassilakis Takis. Now 92 years of age, but forgotten by most. It used to be different because in the 60’s his name was quite known among art lovers , specially the one interested in Kinetic art. His Grec origins never showed in his works , no classical sculptures for him, but investigating the relations between art and science, resulting in Kinetic works which were original. Still he never became the household name as others from his generation have become. No Soto, Staudt or Agam stature for Takis, but he had his moments in art, which resulted in some nice and very hard to find catalogues. 2 of them available at www.ftnbooks.com. Since the early 1950s, he has been exploring these new aesthetic territories, creating three-dimensional works of art that incorporate invisible energies as a fourth, active element. Takis, who describes himself as an “instinctive scientist,” employs powerful, elemental forces to generate the forms, movements, and musical sounds of both his static and kinetic works but never became famous for his kinetic art and that is a pity, because his approach is original, which resulted in somne nice works of which some of them are in some pubic collections ( mainly in France).

 

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Heringa / van Kalsbeek at DE FUNDATIE

The first time i saw these sculptures by Heringa / van Kalsbeek was at the time i was still working at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

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It was 1999 and i was impressed. These resin sculptures looked almost accidental. But they are far from it. These sculptures are created by guidance and when finished they have shape, form, volume and color thought out by the artists. Since 1999 they have had their installations shown in many venues. One of them was the DE FUNDATIE in 2006 which catalogue is now available at www.ftn-books.com.

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Heringa /van Kalsbeek are important contemporary artists and are included in the dutch series of portraits on dutch modern art ” HOLLANDSE MEESTERS”

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Frank Lloyd Wright and Benno Wissing ( 1952)

fllw wissing

One of the first projects and designs Benno Wissing did for the Boymans van Beuningen Museum must have been this Frank Lloyd Wright catalogue “fllw”. The year is 1952 and the chosen size is different from the normal sized catalogues the Boymans had published until that date. But the size and lay out suits the subject of architecture. This is one of the hardest to find catalogues on Frank lloyd Wright and i was lucky to find a copy. The condition is not the best possible and i would rate it 6 out of 10 points , but still it is there and now available at www,ftn-books.com. This is the best from both worlds. Great graphic design meets top class architecture.

 

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Alik Cavaliere (1926-1998)

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Day 2 of the forgotten artists blog is this one on Alik Cavaliere. Without knowing it, i first encountered his works because of an exhibition which was organized by the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1967 of which some catalogues were left. The stack of catalogues was removed and destroyed from our inventory, because no buyers could be found for these “old” catalogues. Decades later, i was lucky to find the obscure special edition of this catalogue which had a special , signed and dated print included. ( the catalogue is for sale at www.ftn-books.com) and it struck me that his art is so playful and even a little avant-garde and can be appreciated by practically all interested.

The etching is of an excellent playful quality and shows his strength as an artist. His bronzes…. just compare them to Guido Geelen’s tulip and you see that 40 years before Geelen , Cavaliere made his bronzes of flowers too and they are far less expensive than the ones by Geelen which are now sought after by collectors worldwide.

cavaliere is an artist who had its fame in the Fifties and Sixties ut was forgotten after that. He still had in his years of fame worldwide exhibitions in Italy, Hungary and the US and perhaps it is time now to appreciate his art once again and show it to a new public. A younger public who discover Alik Cavaliere.

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the galerie Arnaud and Ado ( the artist)

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One of the most intriguing books in my collection of www.ftn-books.com is this precious book Dai DAi Submarine by Ado. I found it years ago and it is for some inexplicable reason still for sale. The design is striking. the contents is typical Pop Art and the design /lay out are one of a kind . A book that should find a nice spot in a Sixties design collection. I have only one available and the condition is excellent. Book published by Galerie Arnaud in 1969 and believed to have an edition of less than 500.