Tag: amsterdam

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Miguel Berrocal ( 1933-2006)

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Berrocal and Dali

100% Spanish and an artist who was in the middle of all in the sixties /seventies. The first time i encountered work by Miguel Berrocal must have been somewhere in 1970. One of the furniture design shops ( Studio 40) had  a little statue with the interlocking pieces which fitted together perfectly and acted like a multi pieces puzzle. I was impressed, but never associated this with art. It more was a gimmick to me. Later i saw the artistic qualities of Berrocal and now for me Berrocal is one of the sculptors who deserves to be recognized as one of the great sculptors from Spain.

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If it was this statue i do not remember….., but these small statues consisting of several pieces were Berrocal’s trademark. People admired him in those days, but one decade later practically all had forgotten him. I always admired these little, beautiful pieces of art, but never had a chance to acquire one for our collection. However what i did find and added to the inventory of www.ftn-books.com were several rare and highly collectable publications including a Jan van Toorn designed poster. These books are as much collectable as his statues , because the edition size is small and because of the exceptional way these are published they are well worth collecting.

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Friso Kramer (1922)

 

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Friso Kramer

Friso Kramer was one of the founding members of Total design but before that date he was one of the leading dutch designers together with Benno Wissing and Wim Crouwel. Known for his excellent but sober designs, he was the man behind the famous REVOLT Friso Kramer chair, which is still in production until this date. Still active as a designer , he recently designed a LED streetlamp for Lightwell. A lamp which will eventually replace all the Friso Kramer designed streetlamps which were placed in the sixties and seventies.

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kramer paallamp

The main part of his career he was the leading designer and director for Ahrend ,a firm which produces office furniture

Two major exhibitions were held on Friso Kramer of which one catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Marlene Dumas…The Lava-Edge(1983)

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This time a blog on one single item. The Lava-Edge, according to me this is the very first monographic publication by Marlene Dumas ever published. There are only 2 publications that i know of which are 1 year older, but these are publications with group exhibitions in which Marlene Dumas featured. So this is really special and what is more…. it was published in an extremely small edition of only 250 copies by Museum Fodor / Amsterdam in 1983. The publication was part of a cardboard box containing publications by : Ansuya Blom, Marlene Dumas, Erik Andriesse, Frank van den Broeck, Rene Daniels, Jean Paul Franssens, Peer Veneman, Henk Visch and Martin van Vreden. This box was published together with another box with Icelandic artists on the occasion of an exchange exhibition “Reykjavik- Amsterdam, ter weerszijden van de Meridiaan” (1983).

The Lava- Edge is the contribution by Marlene Dumas. A true artist book and as said probably the first ever monographic publication.

Oblong sized and containing 28 pages filled with text, illustrations and photographs. The text is partly in South African and partly in English. This book is extremely rare and as far as i know ,i am the only book seller who is offering this publication at the moment and by some coincedence i have 2 copies available. One  as a single copy of the Lava-Edge and one in the complete box with all the other artists. To give a good impression of the item i took some extra photo’s to show the importance of this publication and since i have an extra copy there is a 10% discount for the first who orders it. use: lavaedge10 for the discount.

use it at www.ftn-books.com

 

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Ed van der Elsken(1925-1990)…an almost complete list of publications.

If there is one dutch sixties photographer who deserves world recognition for his entire oeuvre it certainly is Ed van der Elsken. Over 40 years of work in photography and cinema gives a spectacular list of publications:

Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés (1956)

Bagara (1958)

Jazz (1959)

Dans Theater (1960)

Nederlands Dans Theater (1960)

de jong & van dam nv 1912-1962 (1962)

Sweet Life (1966)

Wereldreis in foto’s vier delen (1967-1968)

Eye Love you (1977)

Zomaar in een sloot ergens bij Edam (1977)

Hallo! Een nieuwe Ed van der Elsken (1978)

Amsterdam! Oude foto’s 1947-1970 (1979)

Avonturen op het land (1980)

Parijs! Foto’s 1950-1954 (1981)

Amsterdam? (1984)

‘Are you famous?’ (1985)

Elsken: PARIS 1950-1954 (1985)

San-jeruman-de-pure no koi L’Amour à Saint Germain des Près (1986)

Jong Nederland ‘Adorabele rotzakken’ 1947-1987 (1987)

Elsken: JAPAN 1959-1960 Nippon data (1987)

De ontdekking van Japan (1988)

JAZZ Ed van der Elsken 1955-1959.61 (1988)

Natlab (1989)

Africa Ed van der Elsken 1957 (1990)

ONCE UPON A TIME (1991)

Once upon a time (1993)

l’Amour! (1995)

Hong Kong the way it was (1997)

Leve ik! Ed van der Elsken Foto & Film Essays Filmografie (1997)

Nippon data & After Ed van der Elsken (2000)

Fotografie + Film 1949-1990 Ed van der Elsken Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2000)

Eye love you Ed van der Elsken Fotografies + films (1949-1990) (2001)

55 Ed van der Elsken (2002)

My Amsterdam Ed van der Elsken (2005)

 

But there is one which is not on this list published by the official site of Ed van der Elsken. It is the exceptional publication made for the van Abbemuseum in 1961, designed by Wim Crouwel with contributions by Karel Appel ( who made a special inlay) , Schierbeek and Lucebert….photography… YES!, by Ed van der Elsken.

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Like some of the others from the above publications this is available at www.ftn-books.com

and here are some of the others:

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The DYLABY correspondence

Yesterday, i dedicated my blog to the Tinguely exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum and promised to blog on the correspondence for the DYLABY ( Dynamisch Labyrinth) exhibition. Possibly the most important exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in the 60’s.

I blogged on the DYLABY catalogue some months ago…available at www.ftn-books.com,

but this extremely large and complex exhibition required thorough preparation. In the current Tinguely exhibition there is a showcase in which the letters from the invited artists are presented and because i have a great admiration for Tinguely and Sandberg , i had to photograph the correspondence for my own archives. Because the light above and the glass in between make it hard to make a good quality photograph, there is a shadow cast on the paper, but still text and names can be read and i think it is nice for all interested to read about the invitations and preparations for the DYLABY exhibition. Let me know what you think about them!

dylaby-adylaby-idylaby-hdylaby-gdylaby-fdylaby-edylaby-ddylaby-cdylaby-bdylaby-docs

 

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Willem Sandberg exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (until the 8th of January 2017)

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Last Sunday we visited the Stedelijk Museum for the Tinguely exhibition ( see blog in a few days) and the Willem Sandberg exhibition. Sandberg was not only the director for over 2 decades at the Stedelijk ( 1945-1963), but also took care of almost all the design and typography for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which was made during his years as a director. 5 rooms are filled with a multitude of publications. Mostly for the Stedelijk and some for the Israel museum in Tel Aviv.

What struck me most is that his designs are timeless and still belong to the very best designs that were made in last century. The 3rd room was filled with Stedelijk Museum publications and i was proud to find that 100% of the book publications shown in that room was available at www.ftn-books.com.

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This is an exhibition you have to visit when you are a Sandberg admirer and study the publications on show. Beautiful, in many cases handcrafted typography and designs and among the Sandberg designs the very best that were made. It was good to see that so many of these publications still are timeless and of the highest quality and never looked old fashioned. For me Willem Sandberg is still one of the very “greats” in design and typography from the 20th century.

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Agnes Martin and Thomas Ammann

Agnes Martin has become one of the greats in Modern Art from the last Fifty years. In 1977 the Stedelijk Museum published an excellent catalogue in which the quality of painting was obvious. Beautiful and impressive design by Wim Crouwel and one that is in worldwide demand because of its design and subject. Since then many catalogues were published on Martin but 2 stand out. The first is the one which was published for the Agnes Martin exhibition in the Josef Albers Museum / Quadrat Bottrop. The catalogue was published in such an excellent way that i had to have one myself for my own collection. The poster is even more special because it is an original silkscreen print in such delicate colour scheme that it reflects in the best way the quality of the work by Agnes Martin. The final book i would like to tell about is the Thomas Ammann  Fine Art catalogue they published in 2008. Large sized book with excellent printing and impressive paintings by Martin. Buy these three titles at www.ftn-books.com and  do not forget to take a look at the impressive poster made for the Quadrat exhibition when i will list this later this month at www.ftn-books.com.

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Corneille….A Cobra artist

First of all i do not very much like the works by Corneille, but of course there are always exceptions. I recognize Corneille as one of the great Cobra artist. Together with Appel and Constant these artists brought life into the (dutch) art world in the early days of the Cobra mouvement. But Corneille was one of the first to move away from Cobra and find his own path, paved with colorful women , birds, cats and landscapes. A kind of art he could sell to as many people as possible. He did find a way to make his art available to a larger public and earn through his art a living, not depending any longer on the stray collector who wanted his work for his collection. A brilliant business plan for mediocre art. Producing many lithographs in large editions and joining commercial companies to sell his art together with their products …..it could have been invented by a marketeer and it made Corneille art available for everybody and the person Corneille wealthy. This is the reason you can find ties, pens, vases and scarves all decorated with horrible scenes invented by Corneille, but……………

There is also a different kind of artist. The young Corneille. A searching artist who makes abstract paintings and lithographs….colorful, original and in many cases rare beauties in abstract art.

This kind of art can be found as a cover on a catalogue which i recently acquired for www.ftn-books.com

The cover is an original lithograph. The edition of this Galerie Mathias Fels catalogue from 1962 is only 800 copies of which not many will have survived. The condition of this catalogue with original lithograph is excellent and more important this is the true CORNEILLE, an artist in search of a personal style, which he found in this excellent Cobra composition from 1962.

 

wilfried

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Instant photography / POLAROID

There was a time when our generation was amazed when we saw the instant result when you took a picture with a Polaroid camera. It was at the end of the seventies that these camera’s were hugely popular and many artists in those days used them to get an immediate result. Recently i only know of Araki who still uses the technique of instant photography.  However , a few weeks ago, a friend of the family took a new camera out of his pocket and showed it to us. It was a similar camera to a Polaroid camera , same technique, but much much smaller. Personally i do not think it will replace the digital photography we all got used to nowadays, but maybe some artists will see new opportunities and will use it in their art. Time will tell.

There are some very nice publications to be found on the technique and the artists that used it. Of course Andy Warhol is one of the best known, but there are many more and this form of art was recognized by the Stedelijk Museum in 1982 with a large exhibition on instant photography. An excellent Wim Crouwel designed catalogue which shows many great examples of INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY.

 

wilfried

ftn-books.com

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Bruno Bruni (1935)

Bruno Bruni has become one of the grand old masters in the art of lithography, but beside this discipline he is also a gifted painter and sculptor.

But for this moment i will focus on his lithographs . His lithographs  at gallery Steltman Amsterdam were the first i had seen with such detail and yet also an abstraction. The bed in relation with the nude girl figure in front of it made it almost surreal and this is what attracted me in these works.

After this first encounter i have seen many more works by Bruni and he stayed true to his romantic figures, flowers, raincoats and of course his bronze sculptures with undressing woman, but personally i think his best works are the lithographs with these beds , ruffled sheets and a human figure on or in front of it.

Bruno Bruni , now 81 years old, is still working but the best works are from the mid seventies until 2000. This is the “GOLDEN AGE” of Bruni.

www.ftn-books.com can present some of his best lithographs and of course a small selection of books.

bruni letto a

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