A good way to start the New Year.
ALLE MACHT AAN DE KUNST
A happy and healthy 2020
The art item ” ALLE MACHT AAN DE KUNST ” ( all power to art ) is available at www.ftn-books.com
Category: stedelijk museum amsterdam
Ko Oosterkerk ( 1928-2012)
Jacobus Willem (Ko) Oosterkerk. It has not been recently that Ko Oosterkerk was admired for his black and white , highly abstract etchings. Almost in a contstructivist way he builds his compositions, but always was free, where the constructivist set their limitations.
A few years ago (2016) there was an exhibition at the Kampen Museum, which showed all the qualities of his work through the years. Just have a look at all these wonderful works by searching with Google and you will be amazed how timeless these works are. I leafed through the van Abbemuseum catalogue from 1975 and noticed the quality of all his works. I can highly recommend this artist who is on the verge of becoming much more popular, but now still is very affordable.
Willem Sandberg a 1961 publication
Willem Sandberg has designed many publication for the Stedelijk Museum. Starting as early as 1939 until in the early 60’s he finished designing publications for the Stedelijk and Wim Crouwel took over this task. In those 25 years he rarely made a large sized publication. This book is the exception. In collaboration with Meulenhoff publishers the Stedelijk Museum published its highlights and asked Sandberg to be the designer. A Large sized book of 12.1 x 10.6 inches containing over 200 pages, linnen bound with dustcover. Sandberg took the typical elements ( use of multiple sorts of paper) of his Stedelijk designs and incorporated these in his own way into this much larger publication. The extra size makes the art even more impressive.
This book is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com and has been included in the ever expanding inventory of Stedelijk Museum catalogues. I know that sometimes these emerge and come to the market, but i rarely have seen one at a reasonable price. This one, includes the dustcover, which is almost every time missing ans it is now for sale. A Willem Sandberg masterpiece which has been under valued for far too long.
A classic Christmas Card by Bill Hurtz, ca. 1940
This year a classic Christmas Card for all blog readers. It is a card by one of Walt Disney’s 1940 studio employees…Bill Hurtz. he made a true Disney “classic” with this card.
MERRY CHRISTMAS,
wilfried
Carlo Battaglia (1933-2005)
Intrigued by the catalogue i found on Carlo Battaglia, i started to look into the life of Carlo Battaglia and noticed he became friends and worked together with Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko. But i noticed other aspects in his works. after seeing a large room with Battaglia paintings on photo at studio LA CITTA. I was impressed and at the same time it reminded me of Mondriaan and LeWitt
he must have been influenced by Piet Mondriaan, because just look at the similarities ….just coincidence?
left is Battaglia / right is Duinlandschap by Piet Mondriaan
On the other hand he could have been an inspirator to Sol LeWitt in later years. Battaglia is first and then comes Sol LeWitt with his Horizontal Lines.
left is Battaglia/ right Sol LeWitt
Still i like his works, This is the kind of art that inspires me and never bores.
www.ftn-books.com has publications available on all the artists mentioned
Battaglia served in the Italian Air Force from 1958–59, and in 1962 moved to Paris. In 1967, he lived in New York City, where he established friendships with Reinhardt, Motherwell and Rothko.
In 1970, 1978 and 1980, he was invited to the Venice Biennale, exhibiting his series about Maree (“Tides”) for the first time in 1970, which introduced a theme that would be prominent throughout his life. Battaglia’s most prominent exhibitions include retrospectives at Palazzo Grassi, in Venice in 1967, Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in 1976 and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1978.
He also participated in a number of group shows about Italian contemporary art held in many international venues, including the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington in 1974, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1977 and the Hayward Gallery in London in 1978. In 1978 and 1980, he participated to the 40th and the 43rd Venice Biennale. From 1980 on, he increasingly isolated himself and painted in total solitude.
Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919)
A sculptor, not that very well known outside Germany, but a sculptor who nevertheless has its own museum. The Wilhelm Lehmbruck museum in Duisburg has a nice collection, but the Lehmbruck name is kept alive by practically all large museums in Germany.
Personally i do not know the fascination , because in my opinion Lehmbruck has not freed himself of making classical sculptures. He did not make the full transition into modern sculpture as for instance Giacometti did. Perhaps this is explained from the short life he had and he did not have the time to develop himself completely. If you look at that way, Lehmbruck took the first steps into modern sculpture but never had the time to complete his ideas on modern sculpture. www.ftn-books.com has some nice Lehmbruck publications available.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
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Sixties Magazine TWEN/TABOE with Ed van der Elsken
If you want to know what the Sixties looked like for the youth in the Netherlands, there are 3 magazines you must study. First there is the TIQ magazine. It is now one of the hardest to find magazines in the world, since few numbers were published and because of its controversial contents not to many survived.,….. and then there is TWEN/ TABOE. This is the “progressive” dutch youth showing their interests and sharing this with one of the most important Sixties magazines worldwide. Of course this is my personal idea about this magazine, but it is not without reason that i think this is important. One of the most prominent “house” photographers for TWEN/TABOE was Ed van der Elsken and he literally almost filled the pages of the magazines all by himself with his iconic photographs. Leafing through the special book which was published on the Magazine TWEN, which name had to be changed in TABOE after the german Springer publishing company forced by summary proceedings to do so. TWEN/ TABOE history is short. At the end of 1961 and the beginning of 1961 only 4 magazines were published , but they have proven to be a true historic and cultural document.
The integral publications of these 4 magazines is now available at www.ftn-books.com
Black Friday at FTN books
Not just a 3 days discount but a total of 11 days, a one period discount of 10% on all your FTN books purchases. Valid from the early hours of Friday the 22nd of November until midnight on the 1st of December 2019. Use the special Black Friday 10% discount code:
B2019F
Carel Visser…the 1975 van Abbemuseum catalogue
This is the catalogue which started it all for Carel Visser in the Netherlands. After having had his exhibition at the Art & Project gallery in 1974. Visser was considered to be one of the great talents in the dutch art scene. the result…. museum exhibitions like this first one at the van Abbemuseum in 1975
and in the following years consecutive exhibitions at the art & Project gallery, the Stedelijk Museum, Kröler Muller museum, Haags Gemeentemuseum and Museum Boymans van Beuningen. All these contributed to the fame of Carel Visser in the Netherlands resulting in many more gallery exhibitions, commissions and exhibitions abroad too. Carel Visser has become now one of the recognized leading sculptors and the catalogue which is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com is arguably one of the most important ones in the long list of publications Carel Visser has made during his career.
Leo Divendal (1947)
Leo Divendal…… Photographer, publisher, gallery owner, writer, musician, artist book maker, bookseller and antiquarian.
Why this blog on Leo Divendal, first of ll it is rare that so many talents have come together within one person and…..then there is of course the connection with the Gemeentemuseum where Divendal curated some 20 years ago, together with Willem van Zoetendaal some exhibitions in the Fotokabinetten.
The second reason is that i bought a Divendal special publication recently. Het Glazen Oog is a Divendal special from 1991 which features some of the greatest dutch photographers from last century.
This and other publications are now available at www.ftn-boooks.com
But possibly the main reason is that i noticed that Divendal and i have the same approach to art and artists and that the both of us like the same artists and have an admiration for them. Here is the link to the Leo Divendal site ( https://www.leodivendal.nl/atelier/) in which you can discover all those nice publications which many of them are also available at www.ftn-books.com
