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Rini Hurkmans

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From the beginning of her career, Rini Hurkmans is concerned with topics such as absence, loss, disruption, alienation and the related concepts of safety, security, identity and compassion.
This can be perceived in the photo series Pietà, in the films Dear Son, The Flavor of Salt and Don Quixote but also in the sculptures The White Shroud and The Inner Garden.
Life, art and politics are intertwined in a continuous dialogue and each specific period requires its own thoughts, strategies and forms. Hurkmans initiated the conceptual artwork Flag of Compassion in 2002 out of the desire to go beyond the framework of cultural consensus and consumption. Since 2008, she is an advisor to the Unda Foundation, the foundation that manages the artwork and also organizes a series of

Making Waves events around themes related to Flag of Compassion. By engaging with the Flag, it is investigated how a work of art can activate ethical questions in society and how it can function both within the arts and in society. Hurkmans is the driving force behind the book Compassion. A Paradox in Art and Society (Valiz, 2017) in which Flag of Compassion is discussed as a case study.
She is currently conducting further research into the concept of loss in relation to ethics and politics and is developing new work based on her working period as Artist in Residence at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome in 2019. Her research into the press photo she bought in 1992, and which inspires her work ever since, of the moment Michelangelo’s Pietà was attacked in 1972, serves as the starting point for the work in progress.

www.ftn-books.com has one interesting Rini Hurkmans title available

hurkmans

 

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Pino Pascali (1935-1968)

 

Schermafbeelding 2021-07-07 om 16.53.36Pascali has become a legend over the last decade or so. He counts many admirers and many consider his art timeless and as contemporary as his present ” brothers in arms”.

Pino Pascali was born on October 19, 1935 in Bari, Italy.In 1955, Pascali left the science-oriented school that he attended in Bari, and went to a secondary school specialized in the arts in Naples. Later, in 1956, he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, on the scenic design course held by Peppino Piccolo with the help of his assistant Fabio Vergoz.He also studied under the guidance of Toti Scialoja, whose open teaching approach encouraged students to experiment with diverse mediums and forms. In the context of the Accademia, Pascali met fellow Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis. Pascali also took part in a number of collective shows for young artists: 1956, the Painting Exhibition at the Istituto Tommaseo di Tivoli; 1956, Second Exhibition “Pennello d’argento” at the Circolo Culturale dell Vittorie in Rome; 1959, Scenic Design Show, at the 2nd Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. Before Pascali graduated in 1959 he worked as an assistant scenic designer in many RAI productions and additionally collaborated with the Studio Saraceni, Lodolofilm and Incom as a set designer, graphic design, scriptwriter, and creative writer for television advertising, making sketches, creating characters and shorts for the ads.

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In the early 1960s, Pascali exhibited his sculptures in a number of art exhibitions. In 1965 Pascali exhibited at Galleria La Tartaruga. In January 1968, he had an exhibition at the Galleria Ars Intermedia in Cologne, Germany.

pascali

Pascali died at the age of thirty-two on September 11, 1968 in Rome, Italy, following a tragic motorcycle accident. His short career has served as an important contribution to post-war art.

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Willem Hussem (continued)….the poet

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Willem Hussem has been a long time favorit of mine and not only for his paintings , but also his poetry is remarkable. Influenced by the rythme of japanese poetry , Hussem began to write his poems as early as 1950. He is becoming deservedly more and more known for his poems of which one recently found a place on a wall in the city of Leiden. It is the same poem as the one that graces the cover of the book which was published in 1977 by Bert Bakker and Nouvelles Images which is now available at www.ftn-books.com

Where do you draw the line between the art of painting and poetry? Willem Hussem started out as a painter of landscapes and portraits but from the 1950s onwards his work became more abstract. This way, he hoped to capture the essence of an image, a technique he also used in his poetry. His poems became shorter and more powerful, which is also evident in this poem, in which Willem Hussem uses words to paint the beach of Scheveningen.

After his return to the Netherlands, Hussem also started writing poetry. His first collection of poems, De kustlijn (The coastline), was published in 1949. In subsequent collections the sea also plays a prominent role. The beach of Scheveningen, on which this poem is based, was his primary source of inspiration. Hussem mostly wrote short poems in which he ‘painted’ images for which he received the Dutch Jan Campert award for poetry in 1965.

Translated it is :

PUT THE BLUE

Put the blue
of the sea
against the
blue of the
heavens, wipe
some white
of a sail
in it and the
wind starts to blow

the book is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Floris Jespers (1889-1965)

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Important, but not very well known outside Belgium is Floris Jespers, Friend and contemporary artist to Paul van Ostaijen , Jespers became one of the more important artists in the Interbellum. I personally think that the works he made in that period are less appealing and important than the other artists from Belgium made in Belgium in the period between WWI and WWII, one exception….i love the paintings he made of the people he painted in the Congo. The Congo was a colony of Belgium and Jespers travelled three times from 1951-1955 this country and made some wonderful authentic paintings  influenced by the people and landscapes of an impressive country.

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www.ftn-books.com has recently added some books on Jespers to its inventory.

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Marlene Dumas (continued)

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Undoubtedly Marlene Dumas has proven to be one of the leading artists from last and this century. Always surprising original and highly recognizable. I always have admired her and i am still adding publications on her to my inventory. Last addition is the exhibition catalogue for the Cabinet at the Centre Pompidou in 2002. Beautiful and sparkling publication ands now available at www.ftn-books.com.

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Axel en Helena van der Kraan ( continued)

I wrote several blogs on Helena van der Kraan her photography, but never mentioned i had my first  meeting with the both of them as artists. It was at the time they made huge wooden sculptures that did move. One of these, with a giant bass fiddle was acquired by the Haags Gemeentemuseum and one was placed for a very long time at an office building at the Kortenaerkade in The Hague. The last one was special and frightened many a passer by. Every quarter of an hour he turned his wrist and looked at his watch, scaring the people who happened to pass at just that moment, Now i ahve added to my inventory 2 books on Axel en Helena and….. i want to share a special movie in which Kees Broos (curartor at the Haags Gemeentemuseum) made a video on Axel and Helena, featuring….Gerard Verdijk.

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Scott Kilgour (1960)

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Why this blog on Scott Kilgour?  Two reasons….1st i have added a brilliant ” (red) PUTTI” from 1990 by this artist to my art inventory and 2nd because i think he deserves to be mentioned and i am not alone . The famous Henry Geldzahler wrote the following in 1990

Scott Kilgour’s personality is cool, at a slight distance, but never cruel or ironic. The world he experiences and transmits is idealized without being dewey-eyed. Born and educated in Glasgow, he has known enough of sharp adversity to last him a lifetime. Twenty-three years old when he moved to New York in 1983, Scott found his balance rather quickly, voraciously swallowing museums and art galleries, surveying the scene and seeking his point of entry, his own stance. His bouquet of favorites included several surprises, Hans Hoffman and Willem De Kooning among them, artists whose excellence he recognized without needing their particular esthetics in his own work.

rd putti a

What Scott did discover and make use of immediately on his arrival was George Ballanchine’s great neoclassical institution the New York City Ballet, at its peak in the early and middle eighties, its repertoire as broad and sharply characterized as any performing arts company in this century. It was there, several nights a week, that he refined his sense of composition and his daughtsmanship, that absolute balance of ground and line that is Scott’s benefaction. And it is to Picasso’s transcendental neo-classical harlequins and dancers of 1922 and 1923 that Scott Kilgour’s sense of wholeness and absolute balance refers to memorably, so movingly.

Henry Geldzahler
May 1990, Southampton

the RED PUTTI from 1990 is now for sale at www.ftnbooks.com

please inquire at : wilfriedvandenelshout@gmail.com

Other works by Kilgour are on offer at :

Scott Kilgour

and

http://www.michelemackfineart.com/kilgour.html

 

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Leonardo da Vinci vs Johannes Vermeer

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Since Linda had visited the Mauritshuis some 40+ years ago we finally had planned to visit the Mauritshuis. She told a story that one of her classmates had fainted after seeing ‘THE ANATOMIC LESSON” by Rembrandt, but the real reason to visit was not the story but the truly marvelous collection of 17th century art.

Most visitors interested in art who visi the Netharlnds go to visit the Rijksmuseum, but at a much smaller scale the Mauritshuis covers the same period and personally i think the collection is even better that that of the Rijksmuseum.

The Mauritshuis has in its collection THREE! iconic Vermeer paintings of the aprox. 35 known and dedicated to the artist, plus……these are among the highest rated of the artist including ” GEZICHT OP DELFT” and “GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING”. If you expect rows a viewers looking at this work of art…..you are wrong….my wife was the only one present in the room and admiring the painting from up close. This is the way a painting should be viewed and not the way the Mona Lisa is presented.

For me personally i prefer the Vermeer at anytime i hade to chose. Arguably a far more intriguing work of art and one i admire since the time i first saw it. My taste in art changed, but the admiration for Vermeer is still alive.

Beside many publications on Modern Art www.ftn-books.com also has a small collection on 17th century art.

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Joke Robaard (1953)

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An interesting artist. First time i encountered work was at a fashion centre and later i learned more on the artist. SHe is fascinating and there are not many publications on her. The best was published by VALIZ and is now available at www.ftn-books.com

The Dutch artist and photographer Joke Robaard originally trained in fashion, investigates the configuration of groups of people, for example in networks of friends, colleagues, companies and neighbours. She ‘directs’ individuals in certain positions and patterns in relation to one another, which are then photographed, and uses clothing to illustrate where the connections lie and how they are constantly shifting.

Her work is based on a huge collection of images and texts relating to people’s clothing behaviour patterns. Robaard does not categorise them as ‘fashion’, but wants to find out how clothing works. Her archive can be seen as a cartographic record of everyday clothing. Robaard moves simultaneously through the various zones of visual art, photography, video and fashion.
Moving through art, photography, video and fashion her beautifully designed book Folders, Suits, Pockets, Files, Stock includes texts by Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Robert Bresson, Jorinde Seijdel and the artist herself.

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Mario Molinari (1930-2001)

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Lifelike figures with abstract element. This is is how Mario Molinari presented his art at galerie d’Eendt in 1964. Later he became known for his colorful constructivist sculptures which can be seen at the Fondazione in Torino, but the start was more realistic. Clearly influenced by African art his sculptures do not look modern.

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An in teresting period and a catalogue which is hard to find ( available at www.ftn-books.com). Next time when near Torino start looking for these colorful sculptures. They are not to be missed.

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