Tag: art

It was only 120 years ago that i first heard about Walter Leblanc. There was a small exhibition in a local gallery and at that time the owners predicted me that there would be a great interest in the works by Leblanc…… and they were right!….Leblanc was one of the artists related to the ZERO mouvement, but with a very personal approach to ZERO/NUL. His works were much more poetic and simplistic….a bit more like the early works by the Minimalists. But these works were completely different than most zero/nul works. These were “crafted” paintings with meticulously executed patterns made with “Twisted strings” or torsions, resulting in a composition which in many cases is  closely related to Minimal Art. But Minimal art “avant la Lettre” because these works were made some 5 years before the first Minimal Art was made by Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre and Donald Judd. Walter Leblanc sadly died in a car crash in 1986 , but his works remain. The works are now brought together in a foundation and every once in a while an exhibition is organized. The last one being a Retrospective in Brussel.

They bear a semblance to a fusion of medieval knights and Japanese samurai warriors: the four monumental rust-colored sculptures – entitled “Guardians” – designed by Japanese-American artist Shinkichi Tajiri for the city bridge in Venlo. They were unveiled two years ago by Queen Beatrix. According to the sculptor, the sculptures served as “guardians of the city”. Yesterday, it was announced by his family that Tajiri, a sculptor of the Cobra movement, passed away this past weekend. Shinkichi Tajiri was born in 1923 in Los Angeles as a child of Japanese aristocratic parents, but left America in 1948 in protest against the treatment of over 120,000 Japanese people in his home country during World War II: they were considered state enemies and imprisoned in concentration camps. This also happened to Tajiri himself, his mother, sister, and brothers. “Solely based on my appearance, I was discriminated against, mistreated, and demonized.” In an attempt to leave the concentration camp, he enlisted in the US Army, was sent to Italy, suffered a serious leg injury, and spent five months in a hospital in Rome. While still in America, Tajiri studied at the Art Institute in Chicago. After the war, he first moved to Paris, where he studied under Ossip Zadkine and Fernand Léger, and later to Amsterdam. There, he joined the artists of the Cobra movement. Together with, among others, Karel Appel, Constant Nieuwenhuys, and Corneille, he exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in the infamous 1949 exhibition organized by museum director Willem Sandberg.

Displayed in the Stedelijk was his initial warrior. A decade later, he co-founded Group A’dam together with fellow sculptors Wessel Couzijn, Carel Visser, and Carel Kneulman. Tajiri became well-known to the public for his more abstract work: towering “knots” constructed from bronze, cast iron, steel, and plastic, which have appeared in city centers all over the world. One of these Knots serves as a Meeting Point for lost travelers at Schiphol airport. They are somewhat detached from his war trauma, and align more with the conceptual and minimalist art of the 1960s and 1970s. As a symbol of “the harmony between simplicity and strength,” as the artist explained.

Not to say that the war ever left his thoughts. In the 1990s, Tajiri returned to the theme of warriors. In total, he would create dozens of them. With the atrocities of the Second World War as his inspiration. “The nightmares, the dead, the wounded, they stay with you,” he said when asked. “The only way to live with it is to create images.”

In addition to being a sculptor, Tajiri was also a painter, photographer, and filmmaker. He created experimental films about smoking marijuana, an ode to the work of his second wife (Dutch sculptor Ferdie Jansen), and pin-ups interspersed with images of Richard Nixon (Nix-on-Nixon). He lived at Kasteel Scheres in Baarlo, Limburg since 1962. In 2007, Tajiri was appointed Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. In that same year, a tumor was discovered in his pancreas, and he passed away on the night of Saturday to Sunday. Shinkichi Tajiri was 85 years old.

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Constantin Brancusi was born on February 19, 1876, in Hobitza, Romania. He pursued his studies in the field of art at the Scoala de Meserii (School of Arts and Crafts) in Craiova from 1894 to 1898 and the Scoala Natzionala de Arte Frumoase (National School of Fine Arts) in Bucharest from 1898 to 1902. Seeking to further expand his artistic knowledge, he relocated to Paris in 1904, drawn to its reputation as a major center of creativity. The following year, he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Brancusi’s true artistic calling came to fruition after 1907, when he entered his mature period. Here, he began to experiment with abstracted forms and developed his direct carving technique, which involved working directly with the material rather than resorting to the more traditional practice of creating a model to be replicated by others. As his works evolved, Brancusi became deeply involved in the Parisian avant-garde movement. Although he was never formally affiliated with any artistic group, he counted influential artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Rousseau among his close friends. In 1913, five of Brancusi’s sculptures were featured in the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York City. The following year, his works were showcased in Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery, 291, in the artist’s first solo exhibition.

In a landmark trial that took place in 1927, a debate arose in the United States over whether Brancusi’s Bird in Space should be classified as a manufactured object or a work of art. Ultimately, in 1928, the court ruled in favor of classifying the sculpture as a work of art.

In 1935, Brancusi received a commission to construct a war memorial in Târgu Jiu, Romania. For this task, he devised a sculptural ensemble consisting of The Table of Silence, The Gate of Kiss, and a monumental Endless Column – a project that encapsulates the primary concerns at the heart of Brancusi’s art: the idealization of aesthetic form, the integration of architecture, sculpture, and furniture, and the poetic evocation of spiritual thought.

Despite the onset of World War II, Brancusi continued to work in Paris. His final sculpture, a plaster Grand Coq, was completed in 1949. In the subsequent years, he diligently refined and adjusted his sculptural groupings in his studio, a project that exemplified his affinity for creating dynamic dialogues between his various works and the spaces they inhabited.

In 1955, the first retrospective exhibition of Brancusi’s work was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, before touring to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Tragically, Brancusi passed away on March 16, 1957, in Paris.

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The work of Friso Kramer (1922-2019) has had a profound impact on the international design world, making him one of the most significant designers known in the Netherlands. His unmistakable mark on industrial design can still be seen today.

Born in 1922, Friso Kramer began experimenting with various materials and techniques at a young age. While studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, he specialized in industrial design. And his talent did not go unnoticed. One of his most famous designs is the Revolt chair for Ahrend. A sleek and functional chair, made from conventional sheet steel. Unobtrusive and serving, just like his also well-known design of the green mailbox.

Friso Kramer’s designs are functional, timeless, and innovative. They remain relevant from generation to generation, long after they first hit the market.

“If the form does not contribute to the function, it has no right to exist.”

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Bernard Buffet (1928 – 1999) produced over 8000 works throughout his career, ranging from still lifes, nudes and melancholic self-portraits to cityscapes of Paris and landscapes. He also worked as an illustrator and designer, creating the décor for the opera Carmen, illustrating Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine, Dante’s Inferno, and a few poems by Baudelaire.

Buffet studied drawing and painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts’ in Paris and at the young age of 17, he exhibited in a Parisian gallery. From then on, his star was rising: the reviews were raving and his work was included in almost all major Parisian exhibitions in the following years. His work was also warmly welcomed internationally. His paintings during this period can be described as typically post-war. Still lifes – where poverty is evident – are interspersed with poignant Parisian cityscapes. These paintings, all characterized by prominent black lines, combined with a color palette veiled in shades of gray, align with the popular philosophy of existentialism at the time, known from the books by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

During his esteemed career, Bernard Buffet (1928 – 1999) produced over 8000 works, encompassing a range of subjects from still lifes, nudes, and melancholic self-portraits to Parisian cityscapes and landscapes. He also worked as an illustrator and designer, creating the sets for the opera Carmen, illustrating Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine, Dante’s Inferno, and some poems by Baudelaire.

Buffet studied drawing and painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and held his first exhibition at the age of 17 in a Parisian gallery. Although he was initially seen as a leading artist, his fortune changed. In the 1960s, abstract art gained popularity and Buffet’s still figurative work became controversial in the art world. However, he remained a beloved figure among the general public, leading to commercial success. His exhibitions were managed by Galerie Maurice Garnier, which still represents him today. Garnier ensured that Buffet’s work, although highly debated, was shown in museums all over the world, from Moscow to Tokyo, and from Berlin to Deurne. There is also a clear connection to The Hague, as painters like Ber Mengels and Jurjen de Haan (the New Hague School) were greatly influenced by Buffet’s work.

Since the 1990s, there has been a revaluation of Buffet’s work on an international level. While his work has always remained popular in Japan, more and more art critics in Europe are now appreciating its value as well.

www.ftn-books.com has alarge selection of titles on Buffet now available.

Luc Tuymans, born in Mortsel in 1958, is a Flemish-Belgian painter. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary Belgian artists, living and working in Antwerp. Tuymans is married to Carla Arocha, a Venezuelan artist.

Having received his artistic education at the Sint-Lukas Institute in Brussels and studying art history at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Tuymans’ paintings are figurative in nature. He employs photographic techniques such as cropping, framing, sequencing, and extreme close-ups. In a time when painting was declared dead, he creates uncomfortable figurative monochromatic canvases, sometimes in muted colors. With a cinematic eye, he depicts seemingly innocent, but in reality loaded subjects: a lampshade (from Buchenwald), a broken doll’s body, a hemline and a leg, a cropped view of a body or a face (from the series Der diagnostische Blick, 1992). Several paintings refer to unresolved past events: the Holocaust (Gaskamer, 1986), Belgian colonialism (Leopard, 2000), and Flemish nationalism.

www.ftn-books.com has some highly collectable Tuymans titles available.

Jan Groover is renowned for her formalist imagery of still life, encompassing household utensils and kitchenware. She pursued her studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in painting in 1965. Prior to venturing into photography, Groover taught art at a public school and then went on to pursue a master of fine arts program in art education at Ohio State University. Following her degree, she joined the University of Hartford in Connecticut as a professor. It was during this time that she embarked on her photography journey, replacing her focus on painting with the lens. In her own words, “With photography, I didn’t have to fabricate anything – everything was already there.”

In the late 1970s, Groover began creating her first photographs. These were in the form of color diptychs and triptychs, featuring moving vehicles. With a formalist approach, she aimed to capture time, distance, speed, and color in these images. The closer the vehicle was to the camera, the more blurred it appeared, while a farther distance resulted in a sharper object. Color played a significant role in adding depth to the moving object in Groover’s motion studies.

In 1978, Groover shifted her focus to her kitchen sink for inspiration. She transitioned from street scenes to still lifes of household objects, including stainless-steel utensils, cutlery, bowls, glassware, and even food items. Through experimentation with different combinations of objects, she aimed to achieve a pleasing relationship of shapes, colors, and spaces.

Groover’s approach to still life was a formalist one, as she believed that “formalism is everything.” Focusing on the shapes, lines, colors, and textures of the objects, she often blurred the boundaries between foreground, middle ground, and background. Her enigmatic complexity lies in her ability to create an illusion of depth and space in her seemingly simple compositions. The resulting photographs are a testament to her prowess as a visual storyteller.

www.ftn-books.com has the table top photography book now available.