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James Lee Byars (1932-1997) sculptor and performance artist

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James Lee Byars was both. An excellent sculptor and a performance artist in the US, much like Joseph Beuys was in Germany. They knew eachother very well and became friends in the late Seventies, resulting in a fascination correspondence between them of which part was published.

Obsessed by the idea of perfection, Byars produced a remarkable body of work that strove to give form to his search for beauty and truth. Pursuing what he called “the first totally interrogative philosophy,” he made and proposed art at scales ranging from the vastness of outer space to the microscopic level of subatomic particles, in an attempt to delineate the limits of our knowledge while enacting a desire for something more.

Here is the performance of THE PERFECT LOVE LETTER in Stockholm.

Byars was one of a kind and his art stands out from that of his contemporary artists. www.ftn-books.com is lucky to have some excellent publications on James Lee Byars.

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Maria Lassnig ( 1919-2014 )

Tate Modern announced her last year show as follows….The first UK retrospective of one of the twentieth century’s most original painters… and she definitely is. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam held a retrospective 23 years ago and she proved to be a highly original artist with a completely different approach to her subjects, sometimes very personal, making her own body the subject of a painting. Lassnig made informal paintings, abstract expressionist paintings was educated in and made animation art and showed her paintings during the Documenta which was curated by Rudi Fuchs in Kassel. During his first years of his directorship of the Stedelijk Museum, Fuchs invited her for a large retrospective in 1994 in the Stedelijk. More than 23 years before the Tate the STedelijk Museum recognized her qualities as an artist. Time after time i come to realize that the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is possibly the most trend setting museum in the world of Modern Art. The Maria Lassnig catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Pinot Gallizio (1902-1964)

Schermafbeelding 2017-07-14 om 15.00.38The inventor of industrial painting? i am not sure, but here follows the text i found on Wikipedia on Gallizio after i sought information on him. He is rather obscure and rarely presented in collections , but in the 60’s the Stedelijk Museum held an exhibition and published an extremely nice catalogue on him. But this artist deserves better because for many he was a source of inspiration and a great influence. he was admired by Jorn, Constant and Debord.

https://youtu.be/XD21kq8bz0s

Pinot-Gallizio was born in Alba, Piedmont, where he became an independent Left councilman and a chemist. In 1955, he met Asger Jorn, with whom he co-founded the Experimental Laboratory of the Imaginist Bauhaus in Alba, which was part of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, in opposition to the return to productivism by others in the Bauhaus school, in particular Max Bill. It was held in Pinot-Gallizio’s studio, a monastery from the seventeenth century, and was attended by such artists as Enrico Baj who experimented with nuclear painting techniques, Walter Olmo, who experimented with musical interventions, Ettore Sottsass, Elena Verrone, and Piero Simondo.

Pinot-Gallizio drew from his background as a chemist in developing new painting techniques. In 1956 he, along with Jorn, organized the First World Congress of Free Artists, at which a representative from the Lettrist International spoke, foreshadowing the foundation of the Situationist International in 1957 by members of both groups, including Pinot-Gallizio. At this conference the Italian artists withdrew from the Laboratory, and after the formation of the SI only Pinot-Gallizio and his son, Giors Melanotte, remained. He helped to make the SI known in the art world with an exhibition in Paris in 1959

www.ftn-books.com has the Stedelijk Museum publication available

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Kees Maks (1876-1967) .

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Another painter of daily life in the Netherlands, but only known in the Netherlands , is Kees Maks. The same as Mondrian, Sluijter and Gestel, he tavelled to Paris in his younger years before the first World War. There he entered the Salon the Automne and became a member, where he met Kees van Dongen ( see blog yesterday) and became influenced by this painter. Maks was fully recognized as an important painter when his painting Nightcafe was purchased by the Musee de Luxembourg in 1927.

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Contemporaries often placed Maks’s modernity in his figures, who were clothed and coiffed according to the latest fashion and demonstrated the latest dances, such as the FURLANA. Maks himself chose the clothing for his models, undoubtedly assisted by his wife who worked at Hirsch and later became and independent fashion designer.

As DE TELEGRAAF put itin in 1920….MAKS proved himself a painter who dares to go into raptures over the fashion of time. But despite all this qualities Maks in only known in the Netherlands and is rarely encountered in collections outside our borders.

There are a few tiles on Maks available at www.ftn-books.com

maks shop

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Kees van Dongen (1877-1968)… fauvism

Born in Rotterdam, but French in all his veins , there is still a discussion going on if he is a dutch or a french painter. For me he is 100% french. Practically all his subjects and his registration in paint or drawing of daily life is done in France and influenced in every way possible by French society. He was famous for his portraits of society men and woman ( possibly his most famous portrait is of Brigitte Bardot), but his strength for me is when he watched and depicted french daily life.

For instance the painting which he made on the Moulin de la Galette ( 1904-1905) is one of the very best paintings of the end of the early 20th century and a breakthrough in Modern art and for van Dongen himself, finding eventually a style which in bright unnatural colors ( like green and pink, reality was depicted). Fauvism was born in the work by van Dongen.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice titles on this great artist

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Karel Appel and Jan Vrijman ( Ik rotzooi maar wat aan, 1961)

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Of course the official title is different . The documentary by Jan Vrijman from 1961 is called ” De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel”, but most people from the generation of Karel Appel know these famous words ….”ik rotzooi maar wat aan”, but reality is his painting is far from intuitive and improvisation. Many of his complex paintings were thought out and prepared on paper and i suspect that even the painting Appel is executing in the documentary is prepared and worked out on paper before he paints the canvas.

https://youtu.be/uOucmlHp-m0?list=PLKdaBOQFhN1NcGJTBYV6mj2r8iQoMvSJl

Appel is a great artist and certainly one of the most important ones in the Netherlands from the last century. His painting is the summit in abstract expressionism and he deservedly earned his place among the worlds greatest artist.

www.ftn-books.com has a large collection of Karel Appel books available

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Ad Dekkers (1938-1974)…. dutch Minimal art

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Ad Dekkers was probably the first dutch minimal artist and even is somehow related to the dutch NUL / ZERO art of the sixties and because of his age 36 , on the day he died, there are not too many works by Dekkers. His oeuvre is limited and most of the important works are to be found in dutch ( museum) collections. ALL important dutch museums have work(s) by Ad Dekkers in their collections and these works prove to be more and more important when you look at them in conjunction with other art from the sixties and seventies. Dekkers announced his own death. He was manic depressed and his suicide was no surprise to the ones that had known him. He left us  a great and important oeuvre and many of the publications are available at www.ftn-books.com

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Ram Katzir (1969) and Your Coloring Book

 

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This dutch/Israeli graphic designer and sculptor is not very well known outside the Netherlands, but perhaps this will change in the future. He has studio’s in Amsterdam and Beijing. Until 10 years ago i did not know this artist either, but because of a fantastic pubication he made for the Stedelijk Museum ( Your coloring book) he became known to me. Far before publishers discovered the commercial value of coloring books and the soothing and comforting qualities of coloring books. This book combines both. It is an artist book and coloring book in one and still available at www.ftn.books.com

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Jean-Paul Franssens an expanding inventory/ collection

It has been almost 20 years ago that i acquired my first Jean-Paul Franssens drawing and since, ever when i had the opportunity to acquire another work ,i did  and finally yesterday i was presented with the latest addition to my collection … a beautiful large yellow rabbit from 1992. I am proud to show you the collection as it is now and please look at www.kunstveiling.nl for the prints by Jean-Paul Franssens which i am offering now.

 

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Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968)

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Another artist of whom i saw work for the first time in the Stedelijk Museum was Ernst Wilhelm Nay. The first impression you get it is a modern version of Matisse, but studying it in more detail you find differences and a style which is completely original. I found an excellent article on Nay in the ART DIRECTORY which i copied .

Ernst Wilhelm Nay studied under Karl Hofer at the Berlin Art Academy from 1925 until 1928. His first sources of inspiration resulted from his preoccupation with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Henri Matisse as well as Caspar David Friedrich and Nicolas Poussin. 
Nay’s still lifes, portraits and landscapes were widely acclaimed. In 1931 Ernst Wilhelm Nay received a nine-months’ study bursary to the Villa Massimo in Rome, where he began to paint in the abstract Surrealist manner. On the recommendation of the Lübeck museum director, C.G. Heise, Nay was given a work grant financed by Edvard Munch, which enabled Nay to spend time in Norway and on the Lofoten Islands in 1937. The “Fischer- und Lofotenbilder” represented a first pinnacle of achievement.
That same year, however, two of his works were shown in the notorious exhibition of “Degenerate Art” and Ernst Wilhelm Nay was forbidden to exhibit any longer. Conscripted into the German armed forces in 1940, Nay went with the infantry to France, where a French sculptor placed his studio at Nay’s disposal. In the “Hekatebildern” (1945-48), featuring motifs from myth, legend and poetry, Nay worked through his war and postwar experiences. 
The “Fugale Bilder” (1949-51) proclaim new beginnings in a fiery palette and entwined forms. In 1950 the Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover mounted a first retrospective of Nay’s work. The following year the artist moved to Cologne, where, with the “Rhythmischen Bildern” he took the final step towards entirely non-representational painting. In them he began to use colour purely as figurative values. From 1955 Nay’s painted “Scheibenbilder”, in which round colour surfaces organize subtle modulations of space and colour. These are developed further in 1963-64 in what are known as the “Augenbilder”. A first one-man-show in America at the Kleeman Galleries, New York, in 1955, participation in the 1956 Venice Biennale and the Kassel “documenta” (1955, 1959 and 1964) are milestones marking Nay’s breakthrough on the international art scene. 
Ernst Wilhelm Nay was awarded important prizes and is represented by work in nearly all major exhibitions of German art in Germany and abroad.

Nay publications are available at www.ftn-books.com

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