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Stephan Balkenhol (1957)

Stephan Balkenhol at work

With his sculptures, usually carved out of one massive block of wood, Stephan Balkenhol was among the first artists of his generation to reintroduce the figure to contemporary sculpture. With a hammer and chisel, the artist gouges his figures out of the tree trunk. He takes no effort to hide the shavings and traces of the tools visible in the wood with its knots, grain and cracks. Rather this is part of the work – an inheritance that was perhaps passed on by his minimalist teacher Ulrich Rückriem. In most aspects, however, Balkenhol did not follow the Minimalist and Conceptual trends he was exposed to as a young sculptor. Inspired by the social and political changes of the 80’ s, the artist felt it was necessary to reinvent the figure “to resume an interrupted tradition”.

I have been following his vcareer for over 20 years now and to me Balkenhol is always a surprise. His technicque of woodsculpting it at his very best at this moment asnd his sculptures grow bigger and bigger and keep getting more important by the years. www.ftn-books.com has some nice Balkenhol titles available.

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Michael Raedecker (1963)

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Michael Raedecker records the memories held within spaces and objects in his enigmatic and dream-like paintings. Suburban homes, tree houses and empty rooms and vacant chairs, all float in haunting isolation. Muted hues are penetrated with thread and needle where the artist hand-sews forms into textural materiality. Raedecker mines art history and popular culture, sourcing compositions from 17th-century garland paintings, obscure magazines, and film stills.

this filmed portrait on Raedecker is by Franz Weisz

Since the beginning of his career as a painter Raedecker has incorporated embroidery into his works as a visual counterpoint to his washed-out paint application. His elaborate needlework adds linear definition to representational forms and the thread and paint visually mix together in areas of dense detail or abstraction. The absence or suggested loss of human presence invites the viewer to contemplate architecture as a mental or emotional space, where the domestic realm is detached from practical implications, yet deeply personal. Images of flowers, food and textiles with darkly ambiguous titles bring the domestic associations of his stitching into play with his subject matter, and show his interest in the Dutch tradition of still-life and Vanitas paintings. Raedecker’s distinct formal language explores the relationship between the formless, complex nature of our emotions and the vessels we use to contain them.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Raedecker titles available.

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Mark Tobey (1890-1976)

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Mark Tobey is a great artist and well ahead of his time with his abstract painting. His works look to be coincidental, but these abstract paintings and drawings are far from accidentally. It is a bit like the painting by Hans Hartung. The sketches he makes are the starting point for the paintings. Tobey has influenced Jackson Pollock with his paintings, but never has become the household name that Pollock became after his death. Still his paintings are impressive and there are always parts to discover and admire. It is a way of modern painting, greatly influenced by Chinese calligraphy,  that never grows old fashioned. It fascinates from beginning to end. Finding Tobey paintings in Europe is a hard job. There are some of them to be found in the Beyeler and Kunstmuseum Basel since he moved to Switzerland in the Sixties with his companion. But his paintings are rare, i am not completely sure, but according to my information, but even the Stedelijk Museum has no works by Tobey in its collection. They had an exhibition with Tobey in 1966, which catalogue was designed by Wim Crouwel and is one of the best Crouwel designed in the Sixties for the Stedelijk Museum (available at www.ftn-books.com), but that is all i could find. Still Tobey is well worth checking out, since he is the natural link between Jackson Pollock and the newest generation of Abstract painters.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Beyeler (2010)

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This is the exhibituion i remember most of all the exhibitions we visited during the last decade. It was a “one of a kind” event, which will never be repeated at such a scale. The exhibition covered over 100 Basquiat paintings and certainly not the smallest of them all. The entire FONDATION BEYELER  ( except the Giacometti/Monet room) was devoted to one of the greatest of all painters from the 20th Century. At the time i had the foresight to take some extra Beyeler publicity folders with me and now i have decided to sell 3 of those to collectors. For this original publicity folder please take a look at www.ftn-books.com

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Rainer Fetting (1949)

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Rainer Fetting was one of my favorit artists in the Eighties, but i almost had forgotten him until half a year ago a beautiful and impressive painting by Fetting was auctioned at the Venduehuis. A large painting which belonged to the Hans Sonnenberg collection. A famous gallery owner who was always charmed by artists who focussed on male figures and nudes. Fetting was certaimly one of them. Fetting was considered to be part of the NEUE WILDE mouvement from the early eighties and had developed a very recognizable style of his own. Bright colors , loose in composition and technique his paintings shine after they are finished and the one from the Venduehuis is an excellent example.

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His paintings are starting to appear at auctions and i am very curious what the future will bring. My personal guess is that Fetting is such an artist who is forgotten for the last 2 decades , but in a few years will be one of the great artists from the eighties. www.ftn-books.com has some excellent catalogues on this great germna artist.

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Rene Burri ( 1933-2014)

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The world renowned Magnum photographer René Burri (born in 1933), whose legendary portrait of Che Guevara has been a photographic icon for many years, caught a number of important artists of the 20th century through his lens. The great photographer also realised numerous individual portraits and reportages on his friend Jean Tinguely and his work between 1967 and 1991. Camera in hand, Burri observes the artist at work in his atelier “Le Cheval Blanc” at Soisy-sur-École and during construction of the monumental sculpture “Le Cyclop”, literally peering over his shoulder. In the photographic series showing Tinguely installing his works at the World Exhibition in Montreal, in Basel or in Venice, the photographer manages to capture the artist’s spontaneity and essence – his fascination with movement – in almost cinematographic shoots. He was recognized as one of the true great photographers of the 20th century and in his birthland  Switzerland numerous exhibitions were organized with the photographs of Burri. Among them , arguably the best exhibitions at the Tinguely museum in Basel, where the series on Tinguely were exhibited.

The exhibition poster for the Tinguely exhibition is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)

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I have always thought that the large sculpture outside the Congresbouw / World forum( by Oud) in Den Haag was a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, but just a few years ago i discovered that i was mistaken and that the sculpture was by Pevsner.

My mistake and when you really look more closely there is a large difference between the art of these two artists. The Hepworth sculptures are much more related to the sculptures by her fellow student and contemporary artist Henry Moore and her later husband Ben Nicholson. There are quite a few sculptures of her in the Netherlands because in the sixties several exhibitions were held at which occasions her works were sold.  Some of the best Hepworth catalogues are available at www.ftn-books.com

The Tate gallery has an excellent introductory text on Hepworth which they published on the 2015 Hepworth exhibition. Here is part of tghis text, but you can find the complete introduction at

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dame-barbara-hepworth-1274/who-is-barbara-hepworth

Who is she? 

Barbara Hepworth was a British sculptor, who was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1903. She was a leading figure in the international art scene throughout a career spanning five decades.

Who were her peers?

Hepworth studied at Leeds school of Art from 1920–1921 alongside fellow Yorkshire-born artist Henry Moore. Both students continued their studies in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. Both became leading practitioners of the avant-garde method of Direct Carving(working directly in to the chosen material) avoiding the more traditional process of making preparatory models and maquettes from which a craftsman would produce the finished work.

From 1924 Hepworth spent two years in Italy, and in 1925 married her first husband, the artist John Skeaping, in Florence; their marriage was to last until 1931. 

From 1932, she lived with the painter Ben Nicholson and, for a number of years, the two artists made work in close proximity to each other, developing a way of working that was almost like a collaboration. They spent periods of time travelling throughout Europe, and it was here that Hepworth met Georges Braque and Piet Mondrian, and visited the studios of PicassoConstantin Brancusi, and Jean Arp and Sophie Taueber-Arp. The experience was a hugely exciting one for Hepworth, for she not only found herself in the studios of some of Europe’s most influential artists, which helped her to approach her own career with renewed vigour and clarity, but also found there mutual respect. The School of Paris had a lasting effect on both Hepworth and Nicholson as they became key figures in an international network of abstract artists. 

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Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985)

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Back to back …yesterday’s blog on Dennis Oppenheim…and this one on Meret Oppenheim.

There is absolutely no family relation between these two and Meret Oppenheim has proven her importance over the years. At least there is a generation gap of two generations between these 2 artists. She became friends with Arp, Breton, Duchamp and Man Ray. The last made an important and very well known photo series of her in Paris in which she figured.

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At this time in Paris she was called and considered the MUSE of the surrealists. This series made her an instant success, but this success suffocated her too and she decided to return to Basel and start her own artist career.

She had her studio’s in Basel and Bern and for the last city she left after her death one third of collection to the Bern museum.

Perhaps her most well know work is LE DEJEUNER EN FOURRURE. A large work which was criticized by many, but what now has become one of the icons in Modern Art.

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www.ftn-books.com has some Meret Oppenheim titles available

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Basel…the perfect museum city

 

We always travel the Alsace in the second half of the year between September and December, visit the Christmas markets and pick up some wine at our preferred wineries. If ever we have some spare time and only if there is a nice exhibition, we go to Basel city. You do not need a special “vignet” if you do not travel beyond the Basel / Bale city limits. Certainly do not lunch or drink a coffee in Basel because prices are far too high, but instead visit one of the 3 famous museums within the Basel city limits. First there is the Beyeler Museum ( By Renzo Piano), which is beside the Gemeentemuseum my favorite museum of all time, second there is the Kunstmuseum and third but not least there is the Tinguely Museum ( by Mario Botta). All worth visiting. Entrance fee of all three museums is steep too, but when you save on your coffee and lunch these three museums are well worth visiting. www.ftn-books.com has publications from all 3 museums available.

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William T. Wiley ( 1937 )

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Two catalogues available at www.ftn-books.com and not many more that i know of, make William T. Wiley a rather obscure artist for me, but i realize that is the case only for me, because outside the Netherlands, specially in the US, his name is well known and growing with the year.

His art is typical for the West Coast of the US, but has also something of Jan Fabre and Gunter Brus in it. It has certainly much more humor and at the same time it is very typical for the art Wiley creates and not anything else.

Maybe the importance of Wiley is that he educated some of the great Contemporary artists like Bruce Nauman. Here is what Wikipedia says about it:

He was born in Bedford, Indiana. Raised in Indiana, Texas, and Richland, Washington, Wiley moved to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts where he earned his BFA in 1960 and his MFA two years later. In 1963, Wiley joined the faculty of the UC Davis art department with Bay Area Funk Movement artists Robert Arneson and Roy DeForest. During that time Wiley instructed students including Bruce Nauman, Deborah Butterfield, and Stephen Laub. According to Dan Graham, the literary, punning element of Nauman’s work came from Wiley. Wiley also acknowledges the effect Nauman had on his own work.