FTN-blog

Gradually, year by year and decade by decade, the importance of these two Russian designers is growing. One look at the 1997 Museum of Modern ARt catalogue shows why ( available at www.ftn-books.com). A design language that was new and fresh and one to become adapted by many in the decades to follow ( Piet Zwart, Schuitema and many dutch great designers have known of these works and at their turn were influenced in many ways.

The brothers were at their prime during the revolutionary period of politics and artistic experimentation in Moscow when there was a shift from the illustrator-as-creator to the constructor-as-creator or nonlinear-narrator-as-creator.^[2] In the visual language of the constructor or constructivist, the Stenbergs and other graphic designers and artists assembled images, such as portions of photographs and preprinted paper, that had been created by others.^[2] Thus, the Stenbergs and others realized wholly new images (or compositions) which were no longer about realism. As a result, graphic design as a modern expression eschewing traditional fine art was born in the form of the printed reproductions of collage or assemblage.

One of the causes of the avant-garde artists in the new Russia, who considered fine art to be useless, was served when the Stenbergs and others as constructors-as-creators produced posters that had a use, particularly to serve the state.^[2] (In fact, painter Nadezhda Udaltsova resigned from the UNKhUK in protest against the replacement of easel painting by use-intended industrial art.)

The Stenbergs’ radical approach was spurred by their graphic talent, their knowledge of film theory, constructivism, Malevich’s suprematism, avant-garde theater — and Bolshevik promotion of propaganda to reform the peasant class, and communicate with a widely illiterate population, which rendered commercial graphic design and advertising a desirable and honorable practice.^[2][4][5]

Radical even today, the posters by the brothers were realized within the nine-year period from 1924 to 1933, the year Georgii died at age 33.^]His motorcycle hit a truck, a few months after the brothers had become Russian citizens, and “around the time that Stalin came into power, Vladimir considered it to be the work of the secret police, since independent art was being attacked under Stalin’s rule.”

It is over 30 years now that i have followed Uwe Poth and his works . Erik Bos showed me for the first time his works in his gallery, but since they were far too expensive for me i never acquiredone. A few years ago finally a large work came up for sale at the Venduehuis and it was luckily bought by my sister, but at a pricelevel which made it interesting for me to follow the auctions and hoping another work would become for sale and yes!…… about a year ago i bought a large drawing and now i am waiting for a reasonable priced painting. Not too large, not too expensive….. his works still fascinate me after so many decades and i think it is finally the time for an acquisition. Books on Poth and by Erik Bos are still available at www.ftn-books.com

The visit of the Beyeler meant that i was inspired to write another blog on Georgia O’Keeffe. Not only her paintings were worth the visit. The first room was dedicated to the photographs that were taken of her by the very best and famous of 20th century photographers . Beside the paintinsg i thought this was a wonderful introduction to her works. Here are the photo that were presented in the frist room.

Some nice O’Keeffe books are still available at www.ftn-books.com

A few days ago i told you about our visit to the Fondation Beyeler. We came for the O’Keeffe exhibition , but we were even more surprised by the beauty of all the other rooms. I have seen hundreds of exhibitions during the last 50 years, but this was of such an outstanding quality that i rate this to the top 10 exhibitions i ever visited. Room after room was filled with the most beautiful works of art and contained the very best of artist like Giacometti, Balthus, Kelly, Richter, Monet, Agnes Martin, Newman, Bacon, Miro and the most impressive of them all. ….a room filled with Five(!) magical Rothko paintings. It was quiet in these rooms so we almost had these to ourselves. Most people stayed at the O’Keeffe rooms, but these rooms were of such a beauty, that together with the Basquiat exhibition at the same museum i will remember and cherish the memory of these beautiful works presented in a way that was and is extraordinary. The rooms were light, spacious and the works presented in so much “air” that the only thing you could see and experience was the sheer beauty of these works of art. I have made photographs, but the only way to experience this Passagen exhibition is visit the Fondation Beyeler at a quiet hour. This can not be recommended enough.

and of course www.ftn-books.com has books on all the artist you can see at this exhibition.

Henry Lee McFee was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1886. McFee’s father was a ship designer and his mother was a cousin of the Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Lee Mason. McFee attended the Kemper Military Academy from 1902 until his graduation in 1905. McFee’s formal art training began at the School of Fine Arts in St. Louis, after which he took a job as a surveyor. He was able to quit this job at twenty-one when a large trust from Henry Lee Mason enabled him to paint full-time. McFee enrolled at the Stevenson Art School in Pittsburgh where he spent one year. He then spent two summers in Birge Harrrison’s landscape class at the Art Students League in Woodstock where he enjoyed the town so much he stayed through the winter. McFee learned of Cézanne through fellow Woodstocker Andrew Dasburg who traveled to Paris in the spring of 1909 and returned in 1910 to Woodstock strongly impressed by Cézanne. Working with Dasburg inspired McFee to begin experimenting with abstraction and color.

McFee participated in his first group exhibition at the MacDowell Club in New York in November 1913 with six modernist works, including an abstraction titled Exercise. His participation in the MacDowell exhibition put him in the public spotlight, and future invitations to show his work followed. In 1916 McFee exhibited six Cubist paintings which showed his interpretation of Cézanne and Picasso in an exhibition of American modernist art at Forum Gallery in New York. McFee exhibited in Paris at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1920 and then traveled through France in 1921. McFee returned to Woodstock focused on still lifes which he exhibited in a one-man exhibition at the Rehn Gallery in New York in 1927. Rehn Gallery went on to represent McFee for the rest of his career with further solo exhibitions in 1929, 1933, 1936, and 1950. During these years, institutions such as the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Saint Louis Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American art acquired McFee’s paintings for their collections.

McFee traveled to Santa Fe in the winter of 1926 to see the landscape his good friend Andrew Dasburg painted each winter from 1920 to 1928. Studio Still Life: Pewter and Gold is a still life of Dasburg’s studio resulting from this trip. McFee returned to the area in 1940 when he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work in the South and Southwest.

After living in Woodstock for two decades, McFee traveled south to Savannah in 1936 with the intention of opening his own art school. The project never came to fruition so he moved to San Antonio, Texas in 1937 to teach at the Museum School of Art at the Witte Museum, becoming its director in 1939. He went on to become a professor at the graduate school of Claremont College, California in 1942 where he lived until his death in 1953.

www.ftn-books.com has one publication on McFee available.

From 1961 until his death Viktor IV lived in a boathouse at the river Amstel in Amsterdam. His alterego is Bulgar. With this name he fabricated the famous clocks that run backwards. He lived Almost like a clochard but not secluded, because during his life he kept a very keen eye on the art scene around him. This resulted in one of the most fascinating oeuvres of any modern artist. Building his works from lost and found material washed ashore wooden panels he developed a sign language which was typical for Viktor IV, including a new way of looking at time with his BULGAR watches. Roughly his artistic life can be divided into 3 parts. The first being the making of his ICONS, the second his sign language the RUNES and thirdly the JOURNAL pages he drew almost daily.

The announcement for a Stedelijk Museum exhibition with his clocks is now available at www.ftn-books.com

Since i have sold one of the more importnat small editions by herman de Vries i think it is nice to share this one with all Herman de Vries admirers. It is the VLAKVOLUMEN edition by Amodulo from 1971. Here is the complete edition of this scarce de Vries item and for more herman de Vries publications please visit www.ftn-books.com

A long time wish was fullfilled lastweek when we visited the Alsace region and went to the Fondation Beyeler to visit the Georgia O’Keefe exhibition. It was far more than we hoped for (next blog shows why). A fantastic exhibition filled with work that is seldom seen in Europe in one place. The Beyeler itself is a feast to vist but this exhibition made it even more special.

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant artists of the 20^th century, renowned for her contribution to modern art. Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. By the time she graduated from high school in 1905, O’Keeffe had determined to make her way as an artist. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, where she learned the techniques of traditional painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically four years later when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow offered O’Keeffe an alternative to established ways of thinking about art. She experimented with abstraction for two years while she taught art in West Texas. Through a series of abstract charcoal drawings, she developed a personal language to better express her feelings and ideas.

O’Keeffe mailed some of these highly abstract drawings to a friend in New York City. Her friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, the art dealer and renowned photographer, who would eventually become O’Keeffe’s husband. He became the first to exhibit her work, in 1916.

By the mid-1920s, O’Keeffe was recognized as one of America’s most important and successful artists, known for her paintings of New York skyscrapers—an essentially American symbol of modernity—as well as her equally radical depictions of flowers.

In the summer of 1929, O’Keeffe made the first of many trips to northern New Mexico. The stark landscape and Native American and Hispanic cultures of the region inspired a new direction in O’Keeffe’s art. For the next two decades she spent most summers living and working in New Mexico. She made the state her permanent home in 1949, three years after Stieglitz’s death.

O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings coincided with a growing interest in regional scenes by American Modernists seeking a distinctive view of the nation. In the 1950s, O’Keeffe began to travel internationally. She painted and sketched works that evoke the spectacular places she visited, including the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan’s Mount Fuji. At the age of seventy-three, she took on a new subject: aerial views of clouds and sky. Suffering from macular degeneration and failing vision, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972. However, O’Keeffe’s will to create did not diminish with her eyesight. In 1977, at age ninety, she observed, “I can see what I want to paint. The thing that makes you want to create is still there.”Late in life, and almost blind, she enlisted the help of several assistants to enable her to continue creating art. In these works, she drew on favorite motifs from memory and her vivid imagination.Georgia O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98.

As an artist of national standing, Georgia O’Keeffe has been well known in America for many decades. More recently, her art has begun to attract similar attention and accolades abroad. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s collections include nearly 150 paintings and hundreds of works on paper (pencil and charcoal drawings, as well as pastels and watercolors). The collections also include personal property, from rocks and bones to dresses and paintbrushes, and a significant archive of documents and photographs relating to the artist’s life and times.

A great visit and an absolute must see exhibition when you are near Mulhouse/Basel/Colmar

Becoming increasingly more important each year. With a number of worldwide exhibitions also growing by the year, makes this a female artist who is becoming by the top 10 of female artists who created the most important post war contemporary art.

So she is a key postwar artist, Vieira da Silva’s early career in Paris among the avant-garde of postwar abstractionist lead to a storied contribution to modern painting. In the late 1920s, Lisbon-born Vieira da Silva came to the city to pursue formal arts training where she became established within the European abstract expressionist movement, Art Informel – a period which rejected American Ab-Ex exceptionalism and took to Eastern philosophy to reconsider standards of perception in modern painting. In Paris, she worked and lived among Cubist painters such as Joaquín Torres-García and Italian Futurists, whose styles became influential to her later signature style of maze-like tiling and depth-field play. During the 1940s following the start of the war, the artist moved from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, until 1947 before her eventual return to Paris.

Also influenced by contemporaries such as Fernand Leger, with whom she studied in her adolescence, Vieira da Silva cultivated a unique style of abstraction that broke rules of formalist tradition. Her representations responded to the impact of WWII atrocity on surrounding locales. Surveying street views and urban labyrinth – her paintings envisioned disorientation in the metropolitan modern perspective – they came to display a more globally-oriented and fragmented vision— reacting to the war’s onset of transnational displacement.

www.ftn-books.com has some Vieira da Silva publications available.