Invitation card for the Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten exhibition in 2007
Piet Dirkx weekly
Willem Sandberg a 1961 publication
Willem Sandberg has designed many publication for the Stedelijk Museum. Starting as early as 1939 until in the early 60’s he finished designing publications for the Stedelijk and Wim Crouwel took over this task. In those 25 years he rarely made a large sized publication. This book is the exception. In collaboration with Meulenhoff publishers the Stedelijk Museum published its highlights and asked Sandberg to be the designer. A Large sized book of 12.1 x 10.6 inches containing over 200 pages, linnen bound with dustcover. Sandberg took the typical elements ( use of multiple sorts of paper) of his Stedelijk designs and incorporated these in his own way into this much larger publication. The extra size makes the art even more impressive.
This book is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com and has been included in the ever expanding inventory of Stedelijk Museum catalogues. I know that sometimes these emerge and come to the market, but i rarely have seen one at a reasonable price. This one, includes the dustcover, which is almost every time missing ans it is now for sale. A Willem Sandberg masterpiece which has been under valued for far too long.
Armando exhibition until the 26th of January 2020
For those living in the Netherlands, there is a great Armando exhibition until the 26th of January 2020 in Museum Flehite /Amersfoort
https://museumflehite.nl/tentoonstellingen/146365184/armando-in-amersfoort
And for all collecting Armando publications….. i just added a collection of Armando books of which some are signed by the artist. Now available at www.ftn-books.com
A classic Christmas Card by Bill Hurtz, ca. 1940
This year a classic Christmas Card for all blog readers. It is a card by one of Walt Disney’s 1940 studio employees…Bill Hurtz. he made a true Disney “classic” with this card.
MERRY CHRISTMAS,
wilfried
Cornelie Tollens (1964)
Just a little younger than Erwin Olaf, but seeing both photographers photo’s you can conclude that they are from the same generation and inspired each other. Tollens is an Erwin Olaf 2.0? ……
far from that, because this is an artist with a keen eye on her surroundings and placing objects in such a way that they become something else and have a different meaning . It is the absurd combinations that make her photographs in the book WEIRD NATURE stand out from the others. ( book available at www.ftn-books.com).
But one look at her site ( www.cornelietollens.com) shows that her other discipline in which she excels….. the photography of dutch actors and artists….is another specialty. She has had almost every younger artist in front of her camera and for those familiar with dutch cultural life this is a great way to look at the most famous of dutch actors and artists.
Frank Mandersloot (1960)
Frank Mandersloot is still one of the great sculptors in the Netherlands . Piules of furniture, draperies seemingly random placed, but always making curious and interacting with the space in which it is placed.
Educated in Den Bosch he nowadays is a valued teacher at the Rietveld Academy. For me the Frank Mandersloot catalogue is one of the best the Museum Boymans van Beuningen has published in the Nineties. Designed by 8vo from London it is a highlight among their publications. The catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com
Martin van Vreden (1952)
Active as an artist , mainly painting, van Vreden has not become the household name in dutch modern art as expected . There is a very long list of exhibitions and through the years i started to admire his works.
His paintings are timeless and in many cases inspired by nature and flowers. They are to be found in sometimes vague, but almost abstract compositions. According to the information on the internet he stopped painting in 2013 and started his own gallery (www.tegenboschvanvreden.com), but this does not mean that his paintings are no longer of interest. As said they are timeless and well worth to look for at auctions and internet sales. www.ftn-books.com has the van Vreden book WORKS 1990-1993 for sale.
Anita Groener ( 1958)
The first impression was Jakob Gasteiger, but certainly this is not the case….. there is much more to the work of Anita Groener. The swirls and lines look like Gasteiger but there is much more depth in her paintings. She uses small dots and lines to accentuate the lines making these much stronger than expected. Born in the Netherlands she now lives in Dublin/Ireland and making a name for herself in Ireland. Here is the info on her i found on her artist site.: www.anitagroener.com
Asking what it is to be human today, Anita Groener explores the substance of trauma and loss rooted in this question. She makes work for what needs language, experimenting with both figurative and abstract geographies. The artist focuses on specific current events, their archetypal and psychological resonances, tracing urgent connections between people driven from their homes through armed, economic or political conflict and her own life and family. The deliberately modest means of Groener’s installations and line drawings—twigs, cut paper, straight pins, gouache, twine—speak to the fragility of life and society that refugee crises expose. Her art implicates herself and us, asking questions about the ethics of witnessing and aesthetic response.
Anita Groener was born in The Netherlands and is based in Dublin, Ireland. In 2005, she was elected a member of Aosdána, the prestigious official association of Ireland’s preeminent cultural producers. Until 2014 she was a professor at the Dublin Institute of Technology where she was also the Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006.
www.ftn-books.com has one title available on Groener
Piet Dirkx weekly
The official invitation for the BIOTOOP installation at the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1995. I remember that this was the last exhibition my mother witnessed.aaaa a memorable occasion.
The card design by Gracia Lebbink is superb it is totally different from the invitation that are nowadays used by the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. For me these are far superior with the little embossed yellow rectangle. Simplicity makes these stand out and all are designed in the best of dutch design tradition.
Sérgio Camargo (1930-1990)
Camargo was an almost forgotten sculptor until there was a sudden raise of interest in Brazilian art in the Nineties. This meant that his works were considered to be important for the development in Modern Art and sculpture in Brasil. When you look at the studio pictures in the books that is for sale at www.ftn-books.com, you will soon conclude that Camargo was inspired by Brancusi and Chillida, but still there is so much of his own .
Where Brancusi was inspired by nature, Camargo is much more inspired by the minimal forms. It has been over 20 years now that the last show took place in Europe. Time again to present Camargo again and put his works into context with European and minimal sculptors.
The Nineties catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com
