Martens is not only an ingenious explorer, but also expertly makes the most of his budget. He avoids wastage and utilizes materials such as newspaper and old archive maps from the Stedelijk Museum. He freely deviates from traditional design laws; for instance, the text can begin on the cover or be placed in the margins. His experiments went to the extreme when designing the architecture magazine OASE: each edition is unique. He initially formed it with students from the Workshop Typography, which he co-founded, and now collaborates with his daughter, Aagje Martens.
Since 2019, when Karel Martens joined forces with his children, Klaartje and Diederik, under the name Martens & Martens, their work has expanded into fields such as textiles and collaborations. One such collaboration is with Suite702, which produces towels based on Martens’ color system for the beach cabins in Le Havre. Martens’ designs have also been incorporated into textile designs for companies like Liberty London, Maharam, Hermès, DUM, Pop Trading Company, and Pentagram.
www.ftn-books.com has many Martens designed titles now available and his Stedelijk Museum exhibition will be on view until the 26th of October 2025.
Axel van der Kraan (b. 1949) makes woodcut prints showing a densely built-up world from which the human population seems to have vanished. All that remains is a variety of desolate urban landscapes, bunkers and other fortifications.
The artist’s idiosyncratic oeuvre is composed of powerful sculptures, reliefs and woodcuts, all revolving around his fascination with heavy engineering and military motifs like soldiers, knights, horses and tanks.
www.ftn-books.com has now the invitation for his woodcut prints exhibition available together with some other quintessential vander Kraan publications.
This is what the jury said on JEROEN EISINGA for his Ouborg Prijs win.
With utmost precision and penetrating depth, Jeroen Eisinga’s work has been praised in the jury report for the 2019 Ouborg Prize. Described as being of exceptional quality, his pieces captivate and linger in the mind. On Friday, November 22nd, he will officially receive the Hague City Prize, a joint initiative by the Municipality of The Hague, the Hague Art Museum, and Stroom The Hague.
Eisinga is a driven artist, never satisfied and always pushing boundaries. In his now iconic film, Springtime (2011), he allowed himself to be covered by a swarm of approximately 150,000 bees. His productions are painstakingly labor-intensive, resulting in a smaller oeuvre, but one that is truly remarkable. His films have been showcased at international festivals and art venues, and are also featured in numerous museum and private collections.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) arrived in Giverny at the age of forty-two in 1883 and lived there until his death in 1926. During this period, he cultivated two gardens: a floral garden and a water garden featuring a pond filled with water lilies, inspired by the serene beauty of traditional Japanese gardens. Monet consciously chose exotic flora for his gardens, such as towering bamboo, vibrant water lilies (which he discovered at the Exposition Universelle of 1889), and cascading wisteria. A charming Japanese-style bridge spanned over the narrow part of his pond, adding to the picturesque allure of his gardens.
In Giverny, Monet increasingly isolated himself from the outside world and became captivated by the endless enchantment of his garden. From 1883 to 1926, he painted the reflections on his water lily pond hundreds of times. While his first few attempts at capturing these scenes followed the principles of Impressionism, Monet gradually embraced a more expressive approach to his art. He rejected depth and no longer felt the need to depict recognizable subjects. Instead, his monumental garden paintings exuded a sense of timelessness, transcending the fleeting moments typically depicted in art. This phase at Giverny marked not only the most prolific period in Monet’s career, but also a significant artistic evolution. The pioneering Impressionist of the 19th century successfully reinvented himself in the 20th century.
www.ftn-books.com http://www.ftn-books.comhas several titles on his Giverny paintings now available.
Jérôme Touron, an French male contemporary artist born in Chartres, Eure-et-Loir (FR) in 1967, has a remarkable career in the world of art.
His first verified exhibition, VIS A VIS, took place at Galerie du Haut-Pavé in Paris in 1993. His most recent exhibition, Bousculer la couleur, was showcased at Galerie La Ferronnerie in Paris in 2023. While Jérôme Touron is frequently exhibited in France, he has also had exhibitions in Netherlands, Spain, and other countries. With at least 8 solo shows and 34 group shows in the past 30 years, Touron’s work has been widely recognized (for more information, refer to exhibitions). Additionally, he has participated in 3 art fairs, but has not yet been featured in any biennials. One of his most notable shows, Stage of Being, was displayed at Voorlinden museum in Wassenaar in 2018, showcasing his unique style and perspective. Other noteworthy exhibitions were held at Galerie La Ferronnerie and Passage de Retz in Paris. Jérôme Touron has also exhibited alongside renowned artists such as Dominique Dehais and Marie-Amélie Porcher.
Reinoud Oudshoorn (1953) employs perspective, drawn from the illusory language of painting, and incorporates it into his sculptures. In this way, he aims to bridge the gap between the spatial illusion of the two-dimensional plane and the tangible reality of three-dimensional imagery. Oudshoorn’s sculptures originate from staring and gazing at a blank white surface, which gradually transforms into a space. It is from this process that his drawings emerge.
The choice of material is determined by the selected drawing and its technical possibilities: iron alludes to graphite, while wood is intriguing due to the lines of the grain, and matte glass adds depth. A painting is too much of an illusion for him and a three-dimensional sculpture is too much reality. He has found an intermediary form in sculptures that create space, sometimes on a wall, and sometimes on the floor.
The vanishing point, which is present in almost all of his larger works, is located at eye level, specifically at 1 m 65, creating a palpable horizon at every exhibition.
In her work as a figurative painter, South African-born and London-based artist Lisa Brice seeks to challenge the traditional depiction of women in Western art history. Through her signature use of cobalt blue, Brice reclaims the female nude from the male gaze, which has long sought to oppress women as passive objects of desire. In her portraits, whether in a solo or group setting, women are freed from the limited roles of model and muse. They proudly wield paintbrushes, capturing their own likeness and that of their comrades, or lounge against doors and mirrors while smoking cigarettes, effectively dismantling the hierarchical relationship between the artist and the subject. No longer are these women mere objects for the spectator’s gaze – their direct or seemingly unaware stares represent empowered individuals driven by their own desires.
The characters and settings depicted in Brice’s paintings are formed from a diverse mix of images sourced from magazines, the internet, personal photographs, and, most importantly, art history itself. As she puts it, “all painting is a lineage – it’s all a conversation with what’s come before.” References to well-known works by male European painters such as Degas, Manet, Picasso, and Vallotton can be found in her interior scenes. However, Brice also makes a point to draw upon a lineage of female painters who have been largely overlooked in traditional Western art history. For example, American Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler is depicted pouring cobalt blue paint onto a canvas, Dutch painter Charley Toorop and Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama appear fused together in a self-portrait, and Gertrude Stein (as painted by Picasso in 1905-6) is placed next to Vallotton’s seated figure from The White and the Black (1913), sparking a dialogue between female cultural figures from different generations.
In her early years, Brice served as a printmaking assistant for South African artist Sue Williamson, igniting her fascination for repetition and her characters. One such character is a hissing black cat borrowed from Manet’s Olympia (1863), which reappears throughout her collection as she creates – in her own words – “a small army of feminine figures.”
The striking cobalt blue, squeezed straight from the tube, dominates Brice’s color scheme and carries significant meaning within her work. Initially used to capture the blue light of a neon sign and the atmospheric hue of twilight, it has evolved into a nod to the Trinidadian “blue devil.” This is a character from Carnival, embodied by masqueraders who cover their bodies in blue (or tinted) paint. This “blue devil” is traditionally crafted using Reckitt’s Blue powder – a substance historically used throughout the British Empire for whitening whites, repurposed in this context for skin bleaching. For Brice, this cultural practice and its inclusion in her art serves as a means of “concealing natural skin tones and challenging a simplistic or preconceived interpretation of the subject based on ethnicity.”
It is these two artists who, starting in the late 1950s, radically centered the Shoah (the Hebrew equivalent of the Holocaust) in their art. In a time when the war was unspeakable for many, they chose to create art that would confront viewers with this painful past. By combining the most gruesome images of war crimes with superficial advertising, their work also serves as a critique of the post-war consumer society, which continued to steam ahead and failed to acknowledge the trauma endured by Jews and others. To incite a shocking effect, both artists incorporated modern techniques into their art.
After meeting in New York in the early 1960s, American Lurie and German Vostell maintained a deep friendship, as evidenced by their years-long correspondence. A selection of these letters will be made public for the first time in Art after Auschwitz. In addition to these letters, there will be dozens of paintings, drawings, and objects from both Lurie and Vostell on display. Vostell’s installation Thermoelektronischer Kaugummi from 1970, which can travel from Museum Ostwall for the first time after a recent restoration, will also be featured in the Kunstmuseum.
www.ftn-books.com has the invitation fro the KUNSTMUSEUM DEN HAAG exhibition now available.
Wim Delvoye is a sculptor, performer, and video artist. He received his education in Ghent and represented Belgium at the 1990 Venice Biennale. Two years later, he displayed pigs at Documenta IX (Kassel) that were tattooed under anesthesia with the help of a veterinarian. In 2003, however, his pigs were not allowed at the Watou Poetry Summer.
Delvoye’s work combines a fascination with craftsmanship with production processes that are not directly related to art. His Caterpillar #5, which was featured at ARTZUID 2011, is a characteristic example of this. Irony and banality often play a role. He does not shy away from provocation, but at the same time presents his work as very serious, leading to discussions. He was a participant at ARTZUID 2019, and in 2023, he will participate with Untitled, the well-known cement mixer in a Gothic form.
He plays with ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, blending social hierarchies and classes. Meanings and associations are often not what they seem. The pig – traditionally a smart animal – has become a product for the meat industry. A pale pink counterpart to humans, a symbol of stupidity.
His Cloaca produces anonymous feces, a metaphor for creation itself and a simultaneous relativization. Delvoye is more interested in societal questions than in the form of his work. Art should shock.
Delvoye’s work is included in the collections of major art museums. In 2008, he bought Corroy-le-Chateau at a public auction to turn it into a museum of contemporary art. However, this did not come to fruition. Later, he bought a castle in Melle, where he clashed with authorities over building and environmental offenses. He also opposed the construction of wind turbines around the estate.
www.ftn-books.com has several publications on Delvoye now available.
In the year of 1929, a group of Polish artists united under the enthusiastic leadership of the married couple, forming the Grupa a.r.: the “revolutionary artists’ group” or the “true avant-garde”. They tirelessly defended abstract art in manifestos and polemical articles, while also curating a collection of works generously donated by like-minded artists from all over Europe, including Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky, Jean Arp, Theo van Doesburg, and Vantongerloo. In 1931, the collection found a permanent home in Łódź at the Muzeum Sztuki, co-founded by Strzemiński. Kobro and Strzemiński continued to add their own works to the collection.
The exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum showcases a portion of this collection, as well as highlights from the diverse oeuvre of this artistic couple. In addition to sculptures and paintings, visitors can admire drawings, collages, interior designs, and typographic layouts. These works bear witness to an unparalleled spirit of experimentation, bridging the pure abstract art of De Stijl with the suprematism of Malevich and others.
www.ftn-books.com has the Kunstmuseum invitation now available.
Artist/ Author: Oliver Boberg
Title : Memorial
Publisher: Oliver Boberg
Measurements: Frame measures 51 x 42 cm. original C print is 35 x 25 cm.
Condition: mint
signed by Oliver Boberg in pen and numbered 14/20 from an edition of 20
