Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0176
Piet Dirkx daily …176
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0176
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0176
There is no larger Modern Art Museum in the world that has no Clemente in its collection. From Amsterdam to New York the works by Clemente have spread all over the world. But for us in the Netherlands, it was important that Clemente had some exhibitions with the Art & Project gallery and from one of these exhibitions a beautiful little book was the publication result edition of only 800 copies). This and other Clemente books are available at www.ftn-books.com.
Clemente’s work spans four decades. His work is stylistically varied, inclusive, erotic, and nomadic. It embraces diverse mediums and diverse cultures as well, aiming at finding wholeness through fragmentation and witnessing the survival of contemplation and pleasure in our mechanical age.
Clemente’s work is rooted in political utopia and expresses an anti-materialistic stance. In the 1970s he moved from photography to drawing and anticipated the return to painting of the 1980s.
His work is also nomadic. In the 1980s he divided his time between India and New York. While briefly associated with Neo-Expressionism he took an interest in collaborative works both with Indian craftsmen and with painters like Basquiat and Warhol, and poets like Robert Creeley and Ginsberg in New York. In an interview with The Brooklyn Rail, Clemente commented “these poets had been looking at the East for inspiration and I was also anxious to evade the materialism of the West.”
In the 1990s Clemente explored intensely erotic imagery, inspired by the Tantra traditions both of India and Tibet, and turning contemporary preoccupations with identity and sexuality into an occasion to ask questions about the nature of the self. In the 2000s Clemente underwent a darker and grotesque phase, returning in recent years to luminous images of repose and transformation.
Since the 1980s until today, Clemente has also chronicled New York intellectual and social life through a great number of portraits, contributing to the revival of a genre until then somehow discredited.
Clemente’s art has been presented in solo and group shows internationally. Major retrospectives have been held in the 1990s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at The Royal Academy in London, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and at the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo. Clemente’s art was also featured in 1999-2000 at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, and at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. In the 2000s retrospectives were held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, at the Museo MADRE, Naples and at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. An exhibition of self-portraits and of Clemente’s own version of the Tarot Cards was held at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence in 2011. (the text and information above comes from Wikipedia).
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0175
The followers of this blog know that i have a preference for some galeries. Among them there is of course Galerie de France, galerie Steltman and certainly galerie Denise Rene. From the last one i have acquired some nice additions to my inventory.
Catalogue by Francois Morellet – 1967
Catalogue by Victoir Vasarely – 1966
Catalogue by Le Parc – Couleur – 1959
The catalogues of this gallery always amaze me. They stand out from many of the other catalogues published in the sixties and they are well worth collecting, because in many cases the edition size is very small and almost always the design is top notch…. even in some cases an original work of art is included. ( ~VASARELY invitation).
The choice is far from complete, but there are some very nice examples of GALERIE DENISE RENE catalogues available at www.ftn-books.com
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0174
Last week i was in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and was very much impressed by the Malevich and “white” rooms with Dekkers and Schoonhoven. White and nothing but white and it reminded me of the current exhibition at de Rijk Fine Art ( Noordeinde 95 /Den Haag).
Excellent, high quality, museum worthy paintings by ao Schoonhoven , Dekkers and Leblanc… in a totally different setting which was more a cosy living room ( including the dog ;-), than a gallery. The simplicity and in the same time complexity of the works, work very well in this setting. They do not need a museum presentation to show their true qualities. This exhibition lasts until the 26th of February so i advise you to take a look at the de Rijk gallery and see for yourself the qualities of this great and important gallery exhibition.
For publications on Schoonhoven, Dekkers and Malevich visit www.ftn-books.com
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0173
One of my favorite galleries of all time is the galerie Denise Rene in Paris and not only because the artists they represent are the ones i like most, but also because of their publications which in many cases contain something extra. Like this SOTO catalogue from 1970 which i acquired last week. The blue, silver and yellow squares within the catalogue are all executed in silkscreen prints and which combinations forms an abstract composition within the catalogue, which makes this catalogue some kind of an artist book and not an ordinary catalogue. This catalogue is now available at www.ftn-books.com. As for the other Denise Rene catalogues search for Denise Rene and find some other great catalogues by this famous gallery in Paris.
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 0172
The day before yesterday, Dick Bruna . The creator of Nijntje/Miffy died at the age of 89. Started as an illustrator for the famous Bruna series he soon became famous for the covers of Havank and the James Bond series which were published in the Bruna pocket series. As a sidetrack he created Miffy ( Nijntje in dutch) and this character made him famous all over the world. In his early years he was influenced by the De stijl artists Mondrian and van der Leck and of course Matisse and Leger. The thick outlines in his drawings remember of the works by Leger, but his drawings are much more simplified. That is the reason why so man young children are attracted to the stories of Miffy. Dick Bruna was a great artist, who has his own museum nowadays in Utrecht and will be remembered as one of the greatest dutch artists from the last 50 years.
http://nijntjemuseum.nl
www.ftn-books.com has still some Bruna books in its inventory.