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Marieta Reijerkerk (1962)

Here is what mrs Reijerkerk says about her art:

In my art, I find inspiration in my travels to various countries, including China, Mongolia, Honduras, Mexico, and India. These lands fascinate me because the remnants of the past are not erased from daily life, but rather left in their raw and original state. This is in stark contrast to many European countries, where the past seems covered, tidy, and polished. I am intrigued by how people have lived and continue to live. Silent witnesses of human activities in the present, but especially in the past. The history that can be read in discoveries such as ancient shipwrecks on a beach in China, or the activities of nomads in India. I refer to them as ‘archaeological observations’ and the resulting work is a still residue. My impression of these observations is what I aim to convey to the rest of the world.

It is not that I actively seek inspiration during my travels. Things come my way and I begin to wonder what has happened here – and what will happen in the future. I capture my impressions with my camera or a quick sketch.

www.ftn-books.com has now the book on her collaboration with Jan Radersma.

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Jan Arends (1925-1974)

A first time to dedicate a blog to one of dutch almost forgotten poets who finished his life by jumping out of a window in 1974. The reason is a small portfolio of poems , illustrated by Jan Radersma who made illustrations with 10 of Jan Arends his poems.

With a compulsive drive, he scribbled one poem after another. Some of these poems were included in the collection Lunchtime Poems, which was to be presented on January 23, 1974 at Ko van Leest’s in Banstraat. But Arends was already familiar with the other side of success. Success was reserved for others. His mistrust of others had evolved into a paranoid hatred for any successful writer or poet who was rewarded or better compensated. He was allergic to the literary success of others, especially if they also made money from a job outside of literature.

Sitting behind his Adler typewriter, he lashed out at them. He frantically pounded on the keys. The little letters would splatter across the paper as if he were delivering blows to Remco Campert (“If Remco / refuses / to shake my hand, / Remco / does well. – If / I refuse / to shake Remco’s hand, / I am / a beggar.”), or to Harry Mulisch (“When / he mentions Kant, / he is missing / the point. // He lies like Heidegger. // He stays / in the belly / of Schiphol airport / when he / goes on a trip. // His heart beats / in the clock / of Américain”), or, not to be forgotten, “the beast Bernlef.”

In this unpublished poem, Bernlef is addressed with an ominous tone. Here, the poet Arends takes on the role of a poetic replica of the author of “Keefman”.

the below publication is now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Jan Montyn (continued)

The reason to write again on Jan Montyn is because recently i added to my inventory the ultimate book on Montyn his prints. This book is now available at www.ftn-books.com

My first-ever encounter with the works of Jan Montyn was in the early seventies. It was then that I acquired my very own beautiful etching by the renowned artist – a mesmerizing depiction of a blue bird, set against a typical Montyn background. The artwork was relatively large in size, and I proudly displayed it on my wall for over ten years before replacing it with a photograph by Lucien Clergue.

Despite being in a drawer for the past three decades, my fondness for this etching has not diminished. This holds true for all other Montyn etchings I have come across. They possess a dreamlike quality that effortlessly blends realism with abstract elements, all executed with impeccable technique.

It wasn’t until years after acquiring the etching that I stumbled upon Jan Montyn’s autobiography, which shed light on his early years. The artist had an eventful life, spending time in the Foreign Legion, surviving a shipwreck as a sailor in the Kriegsmarine, and even fighting in the Eastern Front near Koerlandand. He was a colorful character who may not have always made the best political choices, but his art continues to stand out and deserves to be admired without bias.

For an excellent read on the artist’s life and work, I recommend the title published on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1999, available at www.ftn-books.com. Embrace the enigmatic complexity and linguistic dynamism of Montyn’s art, and revel in the unique vocabulary he employs to bring his visions to life. Trust me, it’s worth it.

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Ewerdt Hilgemann (1938)

Ewerdt Hilgemann, a German sculptor residing in the Netherlands, is renowned for his intricate wall reliefs, installations, and sculptures. After a brief period of study at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, he moved on to the Werkkunstschule in Saarbrücken.

In the 1960s, he received work grants that allowed him to explore the realms of printing and art colonies. He showcased his works at various locations across Europe before finally settling in the Netherlands in 1970. For many years, he taught sculpting at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Hilgemann’s works from the 1960s focused on wall reliefs made from wooden sticks, as well as serial, minimalist installations consisting of large tubes made from polyester and steel. This was followed by abstract-geometric wooden sculptures, based on grids and cubes.

www.ftn-books.com has now some of the earliest Seventies publications on Hilgemann available.

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Jan Smejkal (1948)

Jan Smejkal once knew Jan Schoonhoven, with whom he exhibited at the ‘orez’ gallery in The Hague. He also knows Hans Houwing, through whom I came to know Jan Smejkal. Together, we travelled to Berlin to see his work for the first time. The joy was immense: during the first exhibition in 2014, he presented a ‘mirror table’, a base on which layers of old found mirrors were stacked. No broken mirrors, sometimes a little weathered, somewhere a round mirror. The composition reminded me of modernism. This work and the intervention in the space – gallery space bel-etage PHŒBUS•Rotterdam – was sublime and sympathetic: beautiful, but also a bit ‘chance’ because of the found, old mirrors; but above all nice, because the works by Hans Houwing, who carried the solo, were reflected when walking past.

www.ftn-books.com has now some extremely rare Smejkal items available published in the late 70’s for the KUNST PUBLIKATIE/ Gorinchem KUNSTCENTRUM BADHUIS

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Hana Jakrlova (1969)

This is what Hana Jakrlova says about her work on her the site:

I am Czech photographer and film maker living in New York and Prague. My work addresses issues of identity, belonging, intimacy and freedom. In my book In the Meantime: Europe I chronicled a personal photographic journey across Europe after the fall of communism. The following book Big Sister documented the extraordinary ways in which the Internet has transformed our world and how it effects our sense of intimacy and privacy. My various documentary projects over the last 15 years explore life in countries transitioning from totalitarianism to democracy. In projects from Russia, Serbia, Albania, Georgia, Burma and Cuba, I photographed lives of people in oppressive regimes. In my recent photography and film documentary projects in Cuba, I wanted to capture life in the country stuck between the past and the presence and the struggle of people for freedom. In the Cuban Disneyland series I photographed an old government theme park, while the most recent project Musica o Muerte! captured the phenomenon of liberation through music and personal sacrifice.
My work has been exhibited and published internationally and my photography projects won awards at various photography competitions.

www.ftn-books.com has the ˆbiG SISTER book from 2010 now available »

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Herman van Bostelen

During the exhibition “Nothing is Enough,” a photo taken at a Tokyo station in 1999 was partially enlarged and hung on the wall above the basement, in order to connect Heden’s ground floor with the underground space. Ta. Photographs were exhibited on the first floor, and sketches were exhibited downstairs. In fact, it’s too detailed to be an icon, but it’s common in Japan. Everything has a soul. I was shocked because I wasn’t just looking at a sign or a message, I was also looking at a story. Current | 2012 | Exhibition | This is M. Martin Engelbregt


In the summer of 2012, I exhibited with Martijn Engelbregt at Heden in The Hague. The starting point for the exhibition was to open the archives to the public. For Martijn, this affected his entire archive, and for me, my collection of photographs and ideas. The title of the exhibition is “Nothing is Enough”. The text and design were given a second life during Martijn’s project for Utopisch Nest in Leiden.

www.ftn-books.com has now the HEden publication available.

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Sui Jianguo (1956)

Sui Jianguo is a contemporary Chinese artist born in 1956 in Qingdao, China. His parents were factory workers, and he did little work from an early age due to the workload imposed by the Mao Zedong regime. When Sui was 10 years old, schools were closed during the Cultural Revolution and he worked as a laborer in a factory with his parents. In an interview on the subject, he said, “I was transfixed by the era of Mao worship, when Mao was practically a god in the country.” Sui broke his arm at the age of 18 and was unable to work in a factory, which inspired him to start painting. Soon, with his father’s permission and guidance, he began studying painting at night. At the time, realism was an accepted art style, and its mission was to portray Maoist ideals in a romantic and positive light. When he returned to the factory, he began painting propaganda posters for Mao Zedong. After Mao Zedong’s death, he completed his study of traditional Chinese landscape painting in 1976. Sui then moved to Jinan and then to Shandong, where he majored in sculpture. A few years later, he earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He said his inspiration for creating his sculptures came from being told that he was “skillful with his hands” while working in a factory. In addition to traveling around the world and exhibiting his art, he also worked as a visiting professor and lecturer at several universities outside China.

www.ftn-books.com has the Fondation Maeght publication on 3 sculptures in which Jianguo features asone off the selected sculptors

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Ata Kandó (1913-217)

Ata Kandó born Etelka Görög; 17 September 1913 – 14 September 2017) was a Hungarian-born Dutch photographer. She began her photography practice in the 1930s with children’s photography.  In 1932 she left for Paris with her first husband, the artist Gyula Kando, with whom she had three children. After the war, she joined the Magnum photo agency where she befriended Robert Capa. In Paris, Kandó also worked as a fashion photographer. In 1954 she married the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken and moved to Holland with him.

Kando first made her name with compassionate photographs of refugees fleeing their homeland during the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Throughout their adolescence, her children acted as models for her famous story photo books. In the late sixties, Ata Kando went on several expeditions to South America to raise awareness of the genocide against aboriginal tribes in Amazonia.

As a teacher and mentor, Ata Kando also played a significant role for younger generations of Dutch photographers at the Enschede Academy of Visual Arts (AKI) and elsewhere. Among her pupils were later luminaries such as Koen Wessing and Ad van Denderen, the latter of whom, together with Leo Erken, made the selection for her retrospective book Ata Kando Photographer.

Her work has been published in many books, newspapers, and magazines in addition to being seen at numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, Hungary in particular, and North America.

In 1959, she won a silver medal in Munich for fashion photography and then in 1991, received the Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal; this was followed in 1998 with the Imre Nagy Prize, and that same year, she and her husband received the Righteous Among the Nations, awarded by Israel for saving Jews during the Holocaust. In 1999 she was awarded the Hungarian Photographers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

www.ftn-books has now the KIS MUNKÁSOK publication from 2015 available. It is the very special”de luxe” edition including the box. Numbered 115 form the edition of 200 copies.

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Ad van Campenhout (1957)

A. van Campenhout expertly layers one upon the other, leaving behind traces – images upon images, with charcoal seeping into the paper, or sometimes resting on its surface, casting different reflections when illuminated. The overall abstract image delicately balances between ‘what is’, ‘what can be’, and ‘what could be’. In this twilight zone, much remains uncertain, despite the structure. When does white become emptiness, and when does it transform into a tangible presence? In what depth does the grid lie? The drawing has the ability to rotate, change scale, or even reveal a hidden backside. A. van Campenhout strives for tension in the rhythm between pure white and pitch black, with nuanced shades in between: “You see something, but it exists nowhere; a drama with a soul; a form within pure black and white.” Associations reinforce the mood. The grid becomes a stone wall, the lines become prison bars. “They exude abstraction, yet hold within their dusky shadows numerous allusions, memories, and melancholy. They are the cracks of, as he puts it, ‘the human condition’, that he wishes to depict in grey or black with charcoal or chalk.” The entire field of view is filled by the drawing. In that space, the viewer is like a football player on the field. They try to grasp onto something, think they recognize it, but ultimately miss. A. van Campenhout describes it as follows: “The world begins to vibrate. The overlapping drawings, experiences, and memories become landscapes that one carries within. I view the drawing as the residue of attempts, because it is impossible to grasp or hold onto that, or anything else. The charcoal that falls to the ground is a remnant of what has been useful in the passage of time.”

www.ftn-books.com has now the A VAN CAMPENHOUT publication for the DE PONT exhibition available.