FTN-blog

Mordecai Ardon (1896-1992) is considered by many to be Israel’s greatest painter. He studied at the Bauhaus (1921-25) under Klee, Kandinsky, Feininger and Itten. The influence of the Bauhaus and especially of Paul Klee on his artistic development was profound and lasted a life time. The other great source of inspiration were the Old Masters, especially Rembrandt, and El Greco. After graduating from the Bauhaus he studied the painting techniques of the Old Masters under Max Doerner, at the Munich Academy (1926). These dual, seemingly contradicting elements, forged the character of his painting throughout the 70 years of his artistic career. Ardon’s unique position in Modern Art stems from the union of these two opposites in his paintings: A Modern, Expressionist, and mainly Abstract, style, with the classical painting technique of the Old Masters. The depth and richness of his colours owe their quality to this technique. He liberated them from the figurative context of the Old Masters, and turned them into tools for the creation of his original contribution to Modern Art of the 20th Century.
 

www.ftn-books.com has some nice and classic Ardon titles available.

To start with…..I admire both equally. One is one of the greatest graphic artists from the last century…. the other one of the most influential graphic designers of the last century and they worked together for the last Masereel catalogue I just added to my inventory. FM is a small book , even by 50’s standard, but it oozes quality on every page….and it was probably the first time Masereel was presented in the Netherlands, making this even more important. The book is now available at www.ftn-books.com

Settled in Paris in 1960, and graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1964. From 1966, his work was visible in several personal and group exhibitions, Impact at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Céret, Distances to the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris in 1969, alongside Jaques Poli and Hervé Télémaque, or Twelve Years of Contemporary Art at the Grand Palais in 1972. In 1987, it was at the Galerie de France that he presents his work, then in 1994 at the Maeght gallery, Barcelona. He regularly exhibits in both public and private institutions.

In 1968, he participated in the establishment of the Art department of the University of Vincennes-Paris VIII. He taught there from 1969 to 1975. He then taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille-Lumigny, then at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris for nearly twenty years.

Joël Kermarrec’s works have entered the collections of various museums and public institutions, such as those of the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris, the Center Georges Pompidou, the Maeght Foundation, the FNAC, the CNAP, and FRAC Ile-de-France, PACA, and Languedoc-Roussillon.

www.ftn-books.com has the 1970 galerie Withofs catalogue available

in the coming weeks 3 forgotten Piet Dirkx cigar boxes

Piet Dirkx cigarbox 836

Svavar Gudnason (1909-1988) was the leading Icelandic avant-garde artist and one of Europe’s most noteworthy painters of the 1940´s and 50´s. He became acquainted with the famous  Cobra, and was the first Icelandic artist to develop an abstract expressionist style. CoBrA was formed by Asger Jorn, Karen Appel, Constant Corneille, Christian Dotremont,  and Joseph Noiret on November 8, 1948 in the Café Notre-Dame in Paris. Gudnason‘s works are to be found in major modern art museums in Europe and Scandinavia, for example in Louisiana in Denmark and the CoBrA Museum in the Netherlands.

The Cobra Museum catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com

Katharina Fritsch’s iconic and singular sculpture plays on the tension between reality and apparition, between the familiar and the surreal or uncanny. Her iconic objects, images, installations and sound works seem able to imprint themselves on the mind, as if they were gestalts or things we have seen and experienced before. Hearts, crosses, skulls, bottles and Madonnas are used to play on the fantasies and images that we share, but they are transformed through colour and material into things open and mysterious: latent notions transfigured into primal forms. Fritsch often recasts characters and elements from her own, private world. In works such as ‘Tischgesellschaft’ (Company at Table), (1988), subjects – usually male – are transformed through colour and material into frozen, hyperreal beings that seem without otherworldly apparitions.

The clarity, austerity and precision of Fritsch’s forms is developed through a lengthy manual sculpting process, a way to achieve the near industrial perfection of their finish. Fritsch also reworks memories or fantasies into strange, unsettling visions that confront the viewer with their bold directness, formal accuracy and startling geometry. In her last solo exhibition at White Cube Hoxton, Fritsch created a dreamlike garden with a series of brightly hued silk-screen postcards of Essen sent to the artist as a child from her grandfather that resonate with both personal and cultural nostalgia. Singular forms are often used repeatedly to create a psychotic proliferation, placed in a strictly gridded tableaux or in perfect concentric circles for example ‘Rattenkönig’ (‘Rat-King’), (1991-1993) or ‘Kind mit Pudeln’ (‘Child with Poodles’), (1995-1996). Fritsch’s work often has unsettling religious or quasi-spiritual associations and is deeply psychological, as if she is attempting to give an image to our deepest fears recovered from the world of myth, religion, cultural history and everyday life.

www.ftn-books.com has Fritsch publications available .