The people who follow this blog, must know by now of my love for Konkrete Kunst and one of the people who is in the centre of this mouvement is Klaus Staudt. Born in 1931 he originally studied medicines , but after an initial study into the arts in 1957 , he started following classes at the Academy of Arts. Soon he began to experiment with forms and grids, a little like the Minimal artists in the US were doing at that time and from that moment on he began to develop his own style , using multi layers and perspex/plastics ao. as his materials to make his creations. Because of this multi layer aspect his works have a 3D quality which makes them very special and typical Staudt.
Staudt being one of the first Konkrete artists is becoming more and more important and has had some very nice retropektives in the last 2 decades. Some of his publications and multiples are availabe at www.ftn-books.com
I am not the greatest fan of Roger Raveel, but occasionally i can appreciate his works. Specially the Beervelde project in the cellar corridors together with his friends from the Nieuwe Figuratie is a highlight. From his early days he has held exhibitions in the Netherlands and therefore a nice set of publications was published in the 60’s and 70’s by galerie Espace, who represented Raveel during these decades. Raveel is one of the great artists in Belgium, but beyond the Belgian borders his works are scarce. There are some in the Stedelijk Museum and van Abbemuseum, but those are the only ones i know of. Given the fact that he is not very well known outside Belgium and the Netherlands, i was surprised to find the number of publications i managed to collect over the years and which are now in my inventory. So if you are looking for Raveel publications please visit www.ftn-books.com
Starting in 1946 ( December) and ending in 1982 with number 250. This publication was published by Maeght on an almost regular basis of 5 publications each year. Many great artists have made contributions to this famous magazine and what is best, these contributions were in almost all cases original works of art.
Original lithographs were publiohed on one or 2 pages in each publications and in most of the sases there were more than 2 lithographs included. Thre is even a famous publications on Miro with over 20 originals within.
What made it affordable is the edition size which were far more than regular art editions by Maeght, but because these lithographs were not signed they were “original’ cheap works of art. ~Many great artists like Chagall, Chillida, Giacometti and Miro made special editions within the series.
My personal favorit…Wifredo Lam
This series is collectable and affordable and whenever you see a copy in which you are interested make sure that it is complete, because many of the editions did not survive as complete copies because these were torn down and sold separately.
Seurat can be seen as one of the founders of the style which is now know as Pointillism. Painting small dots in a specific color and order, thus making a composition which is fresh, clear, has vivid colors , because the dots look to melt which each other and in this way producing a vivid , shiny color. The composition itself was in many cases linear with imaginary lines all moving in one direction. For instance the lines of Le Chahut all go up. ( see the moustaches).
There are not many paintings executed in the pointillistic style by Seurat. Seurat only became 31 years of age and in this time he made 50 known paintings in the pointillist style. We are fortunate to have one in the Netherlands and it is not the least important one, because mrs Kroller Muller chose this herself to be part of her impressive collection. So do not visit the Museum Kroller Mulelr for the van Gogh’s , but instead look at the other paintings in the collection which are at least as impressive . The Seurat being one of them.
Tip. When you visit the Kroller Muller Museum. Leave your car at the entrance and hop on a bike to cycle to the museum and the Jachtslot by Berlage one of the most beautiful National Parks the Netherlands has and a great way to spend a day.
It was 10 years ago that i encountered a remainder stock of books published by the Smithsonian museum. Among them…. one title that immediately caught my interest, because its photographs were by Lee Friedlander. For me personally this is one of the very best photographers from last century and this title particularly was all about his wife MARIA. At the time of publication i did not know of any exhibitions on Friedlander, but i was so happy to have found this little stack of Maria books and the number of them ( over 20 copies), that the first ones i sold way to cheap. Over the years i sold many of them to different locations in the world.
What remains now are only 4 copies of which the last 3 are still for sale. One i will keep for my photo book collection and as a souvenir of the stack of Friedlanders i found, bought and sold.
A future classic and a highly collectable photo book. This book is available at www.ftn-books.com
Another great artist who i forgot to mention in my blog on Topor is Roman Cieslewicz. Cieslewicz was a long time friend of Topor , lived in Paris too and rose to fame in the sixties with his graphic design for Vogue and Elle and the posters he designed for several other events.
For the dutch his work was presented for the first time in the Stedelijk Museum in 1973 . An excellent catalogue designed by Wim Crouwel was published on that occasion. The exhibition showed the strength of this artist, because the main part of the exhibition consisted of poster designs he had made in the previous 20 years.
Cieslewicz is one of those rare artist, who in his life was far less appreciated than in these days. Graphic art students from all over the world have inquired about his books in the last few years, which shows to me his star is on the rise and soon the books on Cieslewicz will become rare collectable items.
Yesterday we ate with our good friend Annemarie Schrofer and because of the beautiful paintings by her father on the walls, i remembered another member of the Schrofer family ……Jurriaan Schrofer.
Born in 1926 and also a child of Annemarie’s father Willem Schrofer he would become one of the leading typography and graphic designers in the Netherlands. His works can be considered as “avant garde” design, thinking “out of the box” and soon he would develop his very own style . He originally wanted to become a film director, but ended being the assistant to Dick Elffers. This was the starting point of a splendid career as a graphic designer. For a few years in the seventies he was a member of Total Design, but soon followed again his own path. Highly original and recognizable are his designs. He was commissioned by many dutch important institutions and was appreciated for the designs he made for them, but his true recognition as one of the leading graphic designers from last century is only 25 years old. His works would become internationally known and appreciated. There now is a high interest in his works from leading British Graphic design schools and recently the same interest comes from the US.
Jurriaan Schrofer books can still be picked up at reasonable prices and for those interested in dutch graphic design, the designs by Schrofer are an absolute and quintessential part in the history of Graphic design and not to be missed in any collection. www.ftn-books.com
A few days no daily posting , because of a short holiday in a fascinating country…SLOVENIA. It takes only 2 days to drive there and enjoy one of the most beautiful sceneries in Europe. High mountains, rivers, castles and excellent food. An ideal mixture of ingredients to spent a week and enjoy everything this land has to offer. What about Modern Art…only one museum in Ljublana the MG+MSUM in the museum quarter, which has a nice contemporary art collection. But only 1 block away there is something which is not listed in the guides. A free haven of artists, living and working on approx. 2 ha and functioning like a small community. Paintings and sculptures everywhere and a great place to visit and absorb. Pictures tell a better story than words so i put some photos i took, with this blog. For Modern Art lovers this is not to be missed. So walk away from the centre canal to the North east ( about 15 minutes) and visit this place.
In my blog from Sunday you noticed that we visited the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag to have a look at the Riley CURVES exhibition. During this visit we walked the first floor of the museum with part of their permanent collection. Since the Bacon exhibition from 2001 , several painting are “on loan ” from other museums and they have now completed this room with a sculpture on loan from the Hauser & Wirth collection…and placed this in the same room as the Bacon’s….result….one of the most exciting and stunning Museum rooms i have ever seen.
Sometimes there are artists who look like brothers/sisters of each other, same approach to their subjects and this room is an example how closely both these artists are related in their art to each other. Here is the text the Gemeentemuseum published on their site www.gemeentemuseum.nl on Berlinde de Bruyckere.
Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (b. 1964) creates sculptures that reveal the human body and human life in all its frailty. Her installations of equine and human bodies evoke feelings of love and consolation, but also of terror and violence. The work is both emotionally immersive and provocative, regularly creating controversy. De Brucykere’s bitter-sweet images unite pain and suffering with a strong aesthetic appeal. Her Cripplewood presentation attracted great public attention at the 55th Venice Biennale. The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag acquired her sculpture Into One – Another II, To P.P.P., 2010-2011 in 2011 and is now about to hold a major retrospective of her work, much of it never previously exhibited in the Netherlands.
The human body and its visible suffering is the key theme in De Bruyckere’s whole oeuvre. We are now almost immune to images of suffering; the constant stream of ghastly pictures fed to us by the mass media has seen to that. Berlinde De Bruyckere seeks to restore our sensitivity to the suffering that is a timeless and universal part of the human condition. She makes us stop and look at it but leaves us free to make of her work what we will. In doing so, she unerringly explores the limits of the visual representation of physical and emotional pain.
De Bruyckere constructs her sculptures of wax, resin, rope and worn leather or textile and strings together separate wax casts to create single bodies. She is concerned solely with bodies; faces are concealed behind shocks of hair or cloths; heads are often completely missing. Using special pigments, she transforms wax into pallid skin with vague glimpses of blood, veins and contusions. Red patches and ‘wounds’ give the impression of a tortured body and suggest associations with the religious symbolism surrounding martyrs like St. Sebastian – a figure of great significance to Cripplewood. In addition to these religious elements, classical mythology also has a place in De Bruyckere’s work. Ovid’s Metamorphoses are a constant source of inspiration.
Horses are also an important symbol in her oeuvre, used primarily as a metaphor to express profound human emotions surrounding death and mortality.
In addition to her sculpture, the forthcoming exhibition will also feature drawings and early works in textile. De Bruyckere uses her drawings – often made in a combination of watercolour and gouache on recycled paper or cardboard – as exploratory studies relating to the themes of her sculptures. In this respect, she frequently seeks inspiration in the bodies of dancers. The development of ideas with dancers in the studio is a technique of great importance to her and has resulted in various wax sculptures, as well as a number of different series of drawings. These series are not preparatory studies, but function as works of art in their own right, underlining the themes that together form the leitmotif of her entire oeuvre. De Bruyckere’s sketches, drawings, watercolours and sculptures are all interlinked and together constitute a single ‘body of work’.
De Bruyckere trained at the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. Her work was first exhibited in the Italian Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale. This led to immediate international recognition and her work has since been acquired by major museums, foundations and private collectors around the world. She returned to Venice in 2013 to represent her own country in the Belgian Pavilion.
Just a short blog to let you know that a large retrospetcive on Tomas Rajlich will be opened on the 15th of October 2016 which will be on show until 22nd January 2017.
Tomas Rajlich, a minimal painter for whom the grid is the measure of things. Rajlich’s starting point is usually a network of horizontal and vertical lines, which he lays down and then covers them with loose brushwork. The result – constructed with an exceptional feel for colour, sheen and the substance of his materials- is a painted surface in which texture and structure predominate.
The exhibition is made partly with works that Rajlich recently has donated to the collections of the Gemeentemuseum.
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
