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.
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
In 1946 he participated in the exhibition JONGE SCHILDERS in the Stedelijk Museum and joined the experimental group of young painters in the Netherlands which would later become the COBRA mouvement. From there on he developed a very recognizable style with light bright colors, using many shades of red and yellow. Almost every large museum in the Netherlands has works by Brands in their collections and paintings and drawings are frequently offered for sale at auction or on auction sites. But beware !….. at one time i was visiting a viewing day ( many many years ago) by Sothebys on their Nes location when Brands walked in with the Amsterdam director of Sotheby’s. At that time there were about 10 works by Brands for sale. Brands walked around, glasses and furcoat still on (inside a heated room) , made a quick tour in the viewing hall, pointed out and marked at least 5 works that were forgeries, since that occasion and knowing that there are many fake Brands paintings, i stayed away from them. Of course you can buy them at the gallery Nouvelles Images and Galerie de Rijk. It will be a safe buy, because all works sold by them are genuine, guaranteed and mostly registered pieces from the Brands studio, but from other sources …..BEWARE. Eugene Brands publications are available at www.ftn-books.com
The first time i met Gachnang was during an exibition at the Haags Gemeentemuseum when he visited his friend Rudi Fuchs , who was at that time the director of the Gemeentemuseum. I remembered an unpleasant person, but Rudi wanted the publications by Gachnang to be sold at the shop of the Gemeentemuseum and i was critical about them. It was not that i was not convinced of the art within these publications, but the art by Gachnang was so personal and i thought “strange” that i did not see any selling possibilities for them. Years later, i started to encounter his works in museums and found them far more accessible than i first had thought they were. ALL Gachnang publication have a certain quality and belong to the best publications on art in the last 3 decades of the 20th century and some of them are available at www.ftn-books.com
The picture by Eva Besnyo above, i encountered in a Museum Bulletin from 1999 in which Marjan Boot wrote an article on Potst and sculptures. Van der Vaart is a highly original ceramic artist who’s quality is the shapes he created his ceramics in. Forms and shapes which were never before used as a ceramic form, but van der Vaart invented them and made them into real ceramic objects.
The pictures tell a far better story than i can, but there are some remarks to be be made about this blog and the life and exhibitions by van der Vaart. First there is this great photograph of van der Vaart working which was made by Eva Besnyo and secondly one of the most beautiful catalogues Wim Crouwel ever designed was the van der Vaart catalogue from 1975.
There are of course some other books available at www.ftn-books.com
, but this catalogue is very very impressive and in perfect condition.
I am still in doubt for myself if i must consider Leger as one of the great artists from last century…or does he uses a ‘Trick” to compose and impress with his paintings. If one sees an extremely large sized work …it is almost in every case impressive, but as soon as it is a smaller one, the attraction is gone. I will show this with to examples. The first painting is roughly 3 x 4 meters and in the collection of the Fondation Maeght. The send is Trois Camarades in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The first has typical figures by Leger with an abstract pattern painred over them….. a beautiful and impressive Leger. The second one, is for me far less appealing and a “flat” painting.
Make up your mind yourself on Leger , but know that there are some excellent publications available at www.ftn-books.com including a famous Sandberg designed catalogue
The sixties were the time that Pop Art was introduced in Europe and one of the venues where a large exhibition was held was the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Of course the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has had its Pop Art and Warhol exhibitions in those days, but what makes the Stockholm exhibition stand out, was the catalogue which was published with the Andy Warhol exhibition in 1968. Not a small booklet , designed by Wim Crouwel of 40+ pages, but a large catalogue containing approx. 500 pages filled with art and photography. . A true documentary publication with the most important works by Warhol and over 300 photographs with documentary photographs on Warhol and his circle of friends. the Factory photography was done by Billy Name. Spontaneous and random photography, giving great insight in the world of Warhol and his Friends in the surroundings of the Factory. This is one of the most important Andy Warhol catalogues ever published and now available at www.ftn-books.com
Outside the Netherlands Pieter Ouborg is hardly know, but compare this artists to his contemporaries he stand out with a “language” which is original and imaginative. Strange, sometimes surreal and even cildlike ( Yes, he befriended Appel and other Cobra artist). STill he did not become the great name people who admired him hoped for. Still he was admired by his fellow artists and during his life he received some very nice retrospectives in the Stedelijk Museum and the Haags Gemeentemuseum. It si hard to describe his art, but if i must make a comparison it must be Wols ( i wrote a short blog on Wols some weeks ago). For those visiting in the near future , here is the list of collections that has Ouborg works in them: ( and of course the books on www.ftn-books.com)
Yesterday i stumbled upon a short note included in one of the catalogues that i have in my collection that the former owner wanted to see the exhibition La GRANDE PARADE in the Stedelijk Museum. I remembered visiting that exhibition and now almost 3 decades ago i realized that this was one of the first blockbuster exhibitions held in the Stedelijk . A great overview of Modern Art from the 20th century curated by Edy de Wilde who showed his special qualities as a collector with this exhibition and said goodbye to this collection as the director of the SM . It has probably the nicest Leger ever made in it and….Willem de Kooning….many many Willem de Kooning paintings ,who is still one of the key artists within te collection of the Stedelijk. Leafing through the catalogue one can only be amazed that so many great art was once in one place. There are not many of these exhibitions any more, because these are far too expensive to organize , but if there is one….go stand in line for a couple of hours and remember in 30 years the exhibition you visited. If it is as good as LE GRANDE PARADE it was well worth the wait. For the catalogues please visit www.ftn-books.com
The importance of Muybridge is not the artistic way he made his photographs, but because he recognized that he could catalogue motion and movement by placing photographs in sequence. This find was important because in detail one could study all movements. From athletes to birds….everything was photographed ,recorded and placed in sequence, making this in the 19th century the reference guide for all movement. The quality of his studies and photographs is shown in this excellent animation
Conclusion must be that not only serious art lovers, but also directors and animators are tributary to Eadward Muybridge.
And of course www.ftn-books.com has some nice books available on the subject.
