Posted on by — Leave a comment

Jemima de Jonge (2001)

I had an appointment in THE HAGUE and half an hour left before my meeting, so I visited HEDEN and was impressed. A young dutch artist had transformed the complete gallery in a “dark” special place. I do not think it is there anymore but when there is chance to visit one of Jemima’s projects do not hesitate to visit it…..you will be impressed too…

Jemima de Jonge (2001) grew up in Rotterdam. In June 2023, she graduated with honors from her KABK (Royal Academy of Arts) in The Hague.
She uses films like the recent Uprooted to fuse drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance in her single gesture. It’s like a true interdisciplinary child of the time.
Jemima used her drawings from her early childhood to visualize her own thoughts and ideas. In them, (inner) adult tragedies and tensions sometimes collide with childish solutions. She plays with the contrast between rough sketches and clear details.
Jemima exhibits high awareness of her surroundings and uses it to manipulate space. It defines the boundaries between reality and imagination. At this boundary, viewers are drawn into her work through a variety of media and means. They create slightly bizarre experiences and stories with a unique sense of humor that focus on lonely characters.
Jemima de Jonge’s film developments, such as her short films Uprooted (2021) and Enter Amazons (2022), highlight how her drawings, sculptures, installations, and performances naturally blend into gesture. It shows.

www.ftn-books.com has the DE SPELONK publication now available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Jaap de Vries (1959-2014)

Jaap de Vries was a Dutch painter who alternately lived and worked in Breda and London. In addition to paintings and watercolours, he also made films, photographs and sculptures.

The human body and the landscape are a representation of his ideas about loneliness, violence and decay. His use of watercolour on aluminium creates an eerie and ethereal atmosphere in his work. Painting, for him, is about creating space for the shadows within us, for the world of desires tainted by fears.

He enjoys experimenting with various materials and continuously develops his own techniques. At times, he cuts with a stanley knife, while other times, De Vries wipes the pigment off the aluminium surface with a warm washcloth. Through my imperfect portraits, I create a metaphor for the real experience. It is the paint itself that inflicts wounds, apparently, its blood flowing ability capable of doing the same as real cutting, and a face is still able to speak and torture us with the question of what experience lies behind it, and apparently, paint alone can carry that power.

When he turned his attention from human anatomy to nature a few years ago, he was looking for a positive counterpart. His starting point was a boring patch of forest, with the intention of creating an intriguing image through the technique of depiction. “I wouldn’t want to walk through that forest,” a colleague said when he saw one of the paintings. This was an important statement for him: while he needed the drama of depiction in human anatomy to achieve his desired goal, in these paintings, he could display the violence of depiction through the depiction of a few innocent trees.

www.ftn-books.com has recently added some de Vries publications to its inventory.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Kik Zeiler (1948)

Kick Seiler was already involved with Mokum gallery before he started painting. He lived on the top floor above the gallery. When Duque took an afternoon off, Kick would sometimes sit in the gallery, surrounded by the art that so fascinated him. He liked the atmosphere, but what impressed him most was the intensity of the art. Duque inspired him and gave Kiku his first chance. It was not surprising to him that after some time his work began to hang on the walls of Mokum. Kik has been selling well since its premiere. After that, he received many commissions for portrait painting, which is a genre of painting, and mastered it brilliantly. But Kick deals with more than just portraits. He considers it his job to paint the whole world. He can also regularly admire his still life paintings, parts of cities, and genre paintings depicting multiple figures in specific settings.

www.ftn-books.com has the Drents Museum catalog on his paintings available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Ernst Fuchs (1930-2015)

The artistic aptitude of Fuchs was recognized early in his life. At the tender age of 15, he was granted admission to the esteemed Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

It was during his time there that he first encountered his fellow students, namely Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, and Rudolf Hausner. Together, they established the revolutionary Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, a movement that would redefine the art world.

Under the guidance of Professor Albert Paris Gutersloh, Fuchs and his colleagues delved into the techniques of the Old Masters, seeking to imbue their work with a sense of clarity and intricacy. They also utilized allegory and religious symbolism to add depth to their pieces.

Inspired by the works of Austrian symbolist artist Gustav Klimt – renowned for his bold and textured paintings such as “The Kiss” – Fuchs began to develop his own distinctive style, characterized by an emphasis on texture and color.

Renowned for his revival of the traditional mixed technique, Fuchs employed egg tempera to create volume and added a glaze of oil paints mixed with resin to achieve a dazzling effect. His masterpieces can be found in the Jewish Museum in Vienna, Austria, showcasing his unparalleled talent.

In 1950, Fuchs relocated to Paris, where he resided for 12 years. During this period, he embarked on travels to Italy, Spain, England, and the United States, where he crossed paths with renowned artists like Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, and Jean Cocteau, forming meaningful friendships.

In 1961, Fuchs returned to Vienna and began writing about the art of painting, producing several books on the subject. By the mid-1970s, he had also become a highly sought-after opera stage director and designer, taking on projects such as Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and Wagner’s “Parsifal” and “Lohengrin.”

In 1972, Fuchs purchased and renovated the dilapidated Otto Wagner villa in Hutteldorf, transforming it into the renowned Ernst Fuchs Museum. Through his remarkable talents and unwavering dedication to the world of art, Fuchs left an indelible mark on the art world, etching his name into history.

WWW.FTN-BOOKS.COM has two Ernst Fuchs titles available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Anna Verweij-Verschuure (1935-1980)

After Anna Verweij stopped attending the art academy in the late fifties, she began to experiment with materials and techniques. In 1958, she decided to simply go by the name “Anna”. She used leftover materials to create jewelry and small wall hangings. Soon, she devoted herself entirely to textile, the material that would remain her faithful companion throughout her entire career. In the sixties, she delved into designing large, exuberantly colored wall hangings.

In the following decade, her textile work became increasingly detailed and acquired a more conceptual nature. During this period, the concept of textile as visual art was constantly under discussion. This material was still primarily associated with applied art. With her work, Anna gave an inspiring and relativizing twist to this discussion. For her, the boundary between the two “arts” was not a fixed concept.

My Place at the Table

One of Anna’s most notable works is My Place at the Table 2 (1972/73). A pristine white cotton tablecloth is laid over a wooden table, adorned with a refined black embroidered flower border. One of the narrow edges of the cloth culminates in a chaotic array of stitches. In an earlier work, Alice Writes to Alice (1971), Anna shows how a winding strip of fabric transforms into a mysterious script. With a light sense of humor, Anna comments on the contradictions in human behavior and the conflict between inner and outer appearances in pieces like this. Experimental use of flannel, jute, cotton, silk, and printers, in combination with plastic and foam rubber, is characteristic in these works. Her love for nature also makes frequent appearances in her oeuvre, for example in her design drawings of flower fields based on compositions by Piet Mondrian.

In the year of 1978, Anna fell gravely ill. In the final period of her life, transformations of shape take center stage. She creates silhouettes of female figures, modeled after her own body. An exemplary piece is The Leap (1979), which depicts a figure pole vaulting: a clear allusion to the transition between life and death. A large portion of her body of work was realized in the last two years of her life, with her most significant exhibitions also taking place during this time. In 1979, her solo exhibition opened at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and in 1984, she was posthumously honored by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

This catalog is now available at www.ftn-books.com

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Rolf Nesch (1893-1975)

Rolf Nesch, hailing from Oberesslingen, Germany and residing in Oslo, Norway until his demise on October 28, 1975, was a German-born Norwegian printmaker and painter. An early adopter of metal collage in printmaking, Nesch was a pioneer in his field.

Having received his education from art schools in Stuttgart and Dresden in Germany, Nesch was profoundly influenced by the Expressionist extraordinaire Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, with whom he studied in 1924. He was also greatly inspired by the works of renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. In 1925, Nesch began his experimentation with unconventional printmaking and painting techniques. Fleeing Germany in 1933 to escape the persecution of the Nazi regime, he found a new home in Norway, where he had always been drawn to thanks to his admiration for Munch’s work.

During the 1930s, Nesch pioneered a technique of creating deeply embossed graphics by attaching strips of soldering wire onto the printing plate. This novel approach eventually led him to incorporate metal, wood, coloured glass, and stones into his work, creating mosaic constructions that were masterpieces in themselves. Nesch’s ground-breaking methods in printmaking not only caught international attention but also established his reputation worldwide, leading to his selection as Norway’s representative at the renowned Venice Biennale of 1962 and the São Paulo Biennale of 1973.

www.ftn-books.com has now publications available on Nesch.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Oswald Wenckebach (1895-1962)

Ludwig Oswald Wenckebach (1895-1962), born in 1895 in Heerlen, began his apprenticeship with his uncle, the painter Willem Wenckebach, in 1910. He then continued his education at the Traditional Arts School in Haarlem. In 1914, he traveled to Vienna to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Wenckebach was not only a painter, but also skilled in woodcuts, etchings, and lithographs. He returned to the Netherlands in 1919 and settled in Schagen. It was there that he met sculptor John Rädecker, who encouraged him to start sculpting. However, he did not completely abandon graphic art, as evidenced by his 3-cent stamp released in 1928 to commemorate the Amsterdam Olympic Games.

As a sculptor, Wenckebach was self-taught. Initially, influenced by his time in Greece, he worked in the classical Greek tradition. He created sculptures for buildings and monuments, as well as portraits in stone and bronze. In 1935, he was appointed as an extraordinary professor of modeling and sculpting at the department of Architecture at the Technical University of Delft. After World War II, Wenckebach created several war monuments (in Alphen 1949, Haarlem 1949, and Middelburg 1950). He also designed coins and medals, such as the 1950 coin featuring the portrait of Queen Juliana.

It was not until the 1950s that Wenckebach gradually developed his own figurative style, breaking away from the classicist tradition with its heroic, athletic, or archaic figures. He employed a subtle method of stylization, while still maintaining a certain strictness in his figures. Slowly, his free figurative sculptures gained their own character, featuring a sleek and stylized design with a gentle, everyday, and sometimes ironic, tone.

In 1955, Oswald Wenckebach was appointed Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion. He passed away in Noordwijkerhout in 1962.

www.ftn-books.com has the Hefting book on Wenckebach now available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra (1957)

Nothing is as it seems in the deceptive photographs of Tjibbe Hooghiemstra. The photographer explores the experience of space, constantly deceiving the viewer and inviting us to see spaces in a new way.

With his camera, Hooghiemstra zooms in extremely close or out immensely far. This takes us from the unfathomable depths of the universe to extreme close-ups of our Earth. We see water, air, atmosphere, and stars.

What appears far away is actually dizzyingly close, and close-ups prove to be disorientingly distant, while seascapes resemble the cosmos. Tjibbe plays with space. He photographs photographs, prints that have been photographed again, close-ups of paintings, and thus sketches his own timeless spaces. He handles the camera similar to the way he paints, directly and impulsively.

Tjibbe Hooghiemstra (Tytsjerk, 1957) studied at the Minerva Academy in Groningen and the Sint Lucas Academy in Ghent. He works alternately in the Netherlands and Ireland. His work is exhibited worldwide in galleries from New York to Tokyo and at international art fairs such as Art Basel, Fiac Paris, and Art Forum Berlin. In addition to the Fries Museum, his work is also included in the collections of the Stedelijk and Rijksmuseum.

www.ftn-books.com has several publications on Hooghiemstra.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Jan Hofman (1942)

Jan Hofman has been working as a visual artist for almost five decades, focusing on graphic design and mixed media painting. His extensive body of work intrigues through its powerful visuals and refined use of color. The art of Jan Hofman has flourished through the application of new methods and techniques in printmaking. Early in his career, he explored various experiments with paper and developed unique printing techniques that require exceptional skill. He blends pigments and inks in his own distinctive way, which is why he personally prints his etchings – a time-consuming task that results in limited editions. Each print in an edition is truly one-of-a-kind, created under the same tension as a first print.

He delves into the relationships between circles and squares, selectively cutting and folding strips of material in a rhythmic fashion, producing a duplicate of the base figure outside the fixed edges of the artwork. He later perfects this playful process. With these objects, he strives for monumental forms of expression.

Large pieces of zinc with irregular shapes and frayed edges are painted and flow beyond the boundaries of a traditional frame. Characteristic leaves from trees and plants are prepared and coated with thick layers of paint, then combined to create a grand, harmonious composition.

www.ftn-books.com has the ‘t Coopmanshûs catalog now available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Hugo Kaagman (1955)

Hugo Kaagman can be considered an emblematic figure within the now not-so-short history of stencil art. Described as the Dutch Godfather of stencil graffiti, he has pioneered the use of the medium since the late 1970s, using the walls of Amsterdam to spread anti-establishment messages in a clear, iconic language imbued with humour.

Immersed in the Amsterdam underground scene, the first of Kaagman’s experiments with stencils were inspired by punk and reggae references. Soon though, he developed a personal language, irreverently mixing the most diverse visual and cultural influences. Very often, his work results in the juxtaposition of beautiful decorations with social critique. The possibility of endless repetition offered by the stencil has led him to develop his own recognizable style in various directions. He adopted motifs from his travels in Africa and the Middle East: among them the zebra design with which he decorated his house. From working illegally in a politically provocative way, he started receiving more and more commissions, while also exhibiting works on canvas in art galleries.

Since the 1990s he has developed his own very recognizable cipher – the Kaagware – a personal interpretation of Delftware, the traditional blue-and-white Dutch ceramic decorative style. From the early murals in Waterloo Square in Amsterdam to decorating the planes of British Airways, from illegal street spraycans to legal and established art, and from public space to art galleries, Kaagman’s artistic journey has anticipated and paved the path for a new generation of stencil artists.

www.ftn-books.com has the Kaagman Monogrpah now available.