For me Robert Combas is a fun artist. Painting large canvasses with “comic” like figures , thick outlines resulting in a complete style of his own . It is worth visiting his personal site at www.combas.com and what i learned from it, is that Combas makes music too. I did not know this before . He is in a group called LES SANS PATTES and i checked it out at Spotify. A little ambient, a little chansons and some poetry makes this highly original too. This fascinating and versatile artist was a little forgotten outside France, until he had a greatest hits exhibition in the MAC in Lyon in 2012. His paintings can be grouped according to themes, but they all have in common their highly original and recognizable Combas style. If you do not have anything tot do this weekend, visit his personal site and listen to Les Sans Pattes , view them on Youtube and order some great Robert Comas books at www.ftn-books.com
Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943) and Alchimia
Oskar Schlemmer and the BAUHAUS is the first combination that springs into my mind when i think of this German artist. But Schlemmer is much much more. Cubism, murals and stage design are among the other qualities of Schlemmer. It was in 1987 that the Stedelijk Museum recognized these qualities of Schlemmer and devoted a large exhibition on the artist in which all his qualities were presented in an excellent exhibition. Since this exhibition, many other museum have devoted solo exhibitions to Schlemmer, but the one from the Stedelijk Museum remains one of the very best. One of the second reasons why i devote this blog to Schlemmer, is that for me he was one of the first post-modern artist from the last century. Compare his designs with Alchemia and Memphis designs and you can see for your self the similarities between the two of them. over 60 years apart from each other they look alike and are drawing from the same design ideas. Books are available at www.ftn-books.com
Wim Crouwel designed the Schlemmer catalogue for the Stedelijk Museum and it is one of the very best from the eighties.
Robin Winters (1950)
Robin Winters and Europe are possibly a better match than Robin Winters and the US. There have been many shows and important museum presentations in Europe, possibly more than there ever have been in the US. This presence meant a great circle of admirers and some extremely nice publications of which i consider the large printed cotton canvas the very best of them. ( available at www.ftn-books.com ). This extraordinary work measures 150 x 130 cm. and comes with an original Winters drawing printed on paper and signed and dated in pencil by Winters. The cotton work was published in an edition of only 169 copies and shows the best qualities of the art of Robin Winters. Published by publishing house Bebert in 1986.
the following text comes from Wikipedia
Robin Winters (born 1950 in Benicia, California) is an American conceptual artist and teacher based in New York. Winters is known for creating solo exhibitions containing an interactive durational performance component to his installations, sometimes lasting up to two months. As an early practitioner of “Relational Aesthetics” Winters has incorporated such devices as blind dates, double dates, dinners, fortune telling, and free consultation in his performances. Throughout his career he has engaged in a wide variety of media, such as performance art, film, video, writing prose and poetry, photography, installation art, printmaking, drawing, painting, ceramic sculpture, bronze sculpture, and glassblowing. Recurring imagery in his work includes faces, boats, cars, bottles, hats, and the fool.
for an extensive article on Robin Winters please visit https://alchetron.com/Robin-Winters-910625-W
Dan Flavin (1933-1996)

Minimal Art, but for me completely different because of the great change his art makes to its direct environment. Colors, size and composition of the lights change the room where the light sculptures are exhibited completely.
There must be a wealth of unfinished projects, because Flavin generally conceived his sculptures in editions of three or five, but would wait to create individual works until they had been sold to avoid unnecessary production and storage costs. Until the point of sale, his sculptures existed as drawings or exhibition copies. As a result, the artist left behind more than 1,000 unrealized sculptures when he died in 1996.
His earliest works were exhibited in the van Abbemuseum in 1966. The Netherlands were at that time one of the earliest countries to adopt the Minimal Artists. Major exhibitions by LeWitt, Andre and Judd in the late 60’s were held in Den Haag and Amsterdam.
Flavin realized his first full installation piece, greens crossing greens (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green), for an exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 1966. Flavin’s “corridors”, for example, control and impede the movement of the viewer through gallery space. They take various forms: some are bisected by two back-to-back rows of abutted fixtures, a divider that may be approached from either side but not penetrated (the color of the lamps differs from one side to the other). The first such corridor, untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), was constructed for a 1973 solo exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum, and is dedicated to a local gallerist and his wife. It is green and yellow; a gap (the width of a single “missing” fixture) reveals the cast glow of the color from beyond the divide. In subsequent barred corridors, Flavin would introduce regular spacing between the individual fixtures, thereby increasing the visibility of the light and allowing the colors to mix.[24]
By 1968, Flavin had developed his sculptures into room-size environments of light. That year, he outlined an entire gallery in ultraviolet light at documenta 4 in Kassel, Germany. In 1992, Flavin’s original conception for a 1971 piece was fully realized in a site-specific installation that filled the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s entire rotunda on the occasion of the museum’s reopening.
www.ftn-books.com has many titles on Minimal Art and some on Dan Flavin
where is the velum by Keith Haring?
Keith Haring had one of his first European exhibitions within the Stedelijk Museum and for this occasion he made a very large ceiling piece/ the VELUM ( 1986), which was there during the exhibitions and for some time after, but….. since the exhibition i have never seen it again! Of course it is possible i have missed it, because i dit not visit the Stedelijk Museum each day i went to Amsterdam, but it is strange that in 30 years i never have seen it again. It was an extremely large piece by Haring and should be one of the key objects within any collection, because it represents everything the art of Keith Haring has become famous for. I checked the site of the Stedelijk Museum , but could not find it in the collection. Any readers who can help?
The site Widewalls has an excellent description why Keith Haring is important and was one of the key figures in the Grafiti art movement.
The 1990s were a time of change for many social and cultural aspects on a global scale. Art particularly saw many artists bring tremendous change in this period, and Keith Haring was one of them. Drawing and painting murals in public locations, Haring was often philosophical about his approach to creating artwork, and was amazed and inspired by the interaction and feedback he would get from people around him. Although he was young, he had developed a very specific concept of what art should represent, and the ideology carried over through his work would leave an everlasting effect on the street culture in New York City, as well as art as a whole. Along with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Futura 2000 and Richard Hambleton, among others, he was part of the young, up-and-coming group of the American artists who challenged art’s old perceptions.
Fortunately the publications on Haring at www.ftn-books.com did not disappear ( but they can get sold out).
Julie de Graag (1877-1924), Two masterpieces
Anna Julia de Graag was born in Gorinchem and followed her art education at the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten with Aarts and Bremmer. This H.P. Bremmer would later become the most important art advisor for mrs. Kroller Muller and was from the beginning of her career the personwho guided her into the world of art. Julie de Graag had a very personal way of depicting everyday subjects. Stylized, thick outlines, nature brought back to its essence. Julie de Graag was first and foremost a graphic artist. Her skills were superb and this resulted in great , beautiful small works of art. Her woodcuts i consider to be the very best and most beautiful i know of.
For me it started with a very small , but delicate exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum some 15 years ago and since i have been looking for these true masterpieces. There are not many of them , because Julie de Graag , had a small oeuvre and not many of these remain,because there had been a fire in her studio in which many of these works were lost. Furthermore she had to stop working in the early 20’s because she fell physically and mentally ill . and because of this illness and her weakening she committed suicide at the age of 46 . A sad life with beautiful exquisite art as a result.
It has been a while, but i am fortunate to have found another 2 excellent examples of her art and skills and both are for sale at www.ftn-books.com. For Julie de Graag these are large woodcuts ( approx. 23 x 19 cm) and best of all both are signed in the block and in pencil and in excellent condition.
Francois Morellet (1926-2016)
It was 7 years ago that the Peter Stuyvesant collection was sold by Sothebys Amsterdam. Within this collection there were some very important Morellet paintings. Large , complex and typical Morellet. As i learned later one of them was bought by Joop van Caldenborgh. The initiator and founder of the Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar. This painting was fantastic and showed for me why Morellet has become one of my favorite painters of all time. The painting from the BAT collection was estimated between 20.000 and 30.000 euro, but had a hammer price of euro 432.750. Which is 14x the maximum estimated price.
For us “mortals” this is completely out of reach, but still some great works by Morellet can be had at affordable prices , because Morellet contributed in many ways, to excellent publications in which original silkscreens or lithographs were included. One of these publications is available at www.ftn-books.com ( for availability inquire/ p.o.a.), together with many other rare Morellet publications from the 60’s and 70’s.
After a short period of figurative/representational work, Morellet turned to abstraction in 1950 and he adopted a pictorial language of simple geometric forms: lines, squares and triangles assembled into two-dimensional compositions. In 1961, he was one of the founders of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), with fellow artists Francisco Sobrino, Horatio Garcia-Rossi, Hugo DeMarco, Julio Le Parc, Jean-Pierre Yvaral (the son of Victor Vasarely) and Joël Stein, François Molnar and Vera Molnar (the last two left the group shortly after). Morellet began at this time to work with neon tube lighting.
From the 1960s on, Morellet worked in various materials (fabric, tape, neon, walls…) and in doing so investigated the use of the exhibition space in terms similar to artists of installation art and environmental art. He gained an international reputation, especially in Germany and France, and he was commissioned to create work for public and private collections in Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.S.A.
Morellet , french, but in his approach to art more cosmopolitan, because he must be influenced by the minimal artists that were starting to appear on the art scene during the 60’s and early 70’s. He experimented with lines, grids, and light and developed an art form recognizable as being Morellet. an important artist and for me personally one of the greatest from last century.
Marcel van Eeden (1965)
I picked Marcel van Eeeden for todays blog because of two reasons. First of all ….arguably van Eeden is the greatest drawing artist in the Netherlands today. He publishes frequently on the internet and has exhibitions all over the world. Transforming every day scenes and news paper clippings into authentic van Eeden drawings he has made after 30 years a tremendous oeuvre. Born in Den Haag and living nowadays in Zurich, van Eeden is the latest addition to the video series of famous dutch artists. The series started some years ago and contains now over 100 contributions. Fascinating 15 minute portraits/movies on the best of dutch artists.
http://hollandsemeesters.info
De Gemeentemuseum was one of the first museums in which the drawings by van Eeden have been presented and since this opportunity to see his intimate drawings, i became interested in his publications. The books he published feel like graphic novels , but are instantly recognizable as van Eeden publications. Some of these highly collectable books are available at www.ftn-books.com
To show the quality of the series of HOLLANDSE MEESTERS i put the van Eeden video with this blog, but do not forget to look at the complete lists of dutch artists and look for more at the site of http://hollandsemeesters.info
Jan Snoeck handpainted bowl for sale at Catawiki
It has been some time now that i am auctioning on Catawiki handpainted plates and bowls by Jan Snoeck. These items were made some 30 years ago and are all signed on the back. I mention this auction, because Jan Snoeck will have a special exhibition at the Museum Jan van der Togt / Amstelveen opening on the 1st of March ( https://www.jvdtogt.nl/verwacht-jan-snoeck-oskar-lens/). This will be a great occasion to see the works by Jan Snoeck who has become one of the most important European ceramic artists. Snoeck’s his works are rarely offered but the plate on Catawiki / https://veiling.catawiki.nl/kavels/10479085-jan-snoeck-unicum-schaal. is a rare and typical Snoeck ceramic plate and deserves to become part of a great collection. Take a look for yourself and if you are interested in the books by Jan Snoeck, visit www.ftn-books.com. ( only a few left). For the other available plates inquire.