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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

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Arguably the greatest architect of all time is Frank Lloyd Wright and the villa Fallingwater in Pennsylviania is one of the “must see” buildings i still have on my wish list. The Guggenheim Museum in NY i already visited but Fallingwater not.

FLW was a visionary architect. His designs were the very first modernist designs in architecture and very much based on constructivist principles. I just learned that as a child he build buildngs with FROBEL blocks and these wooden blocks must have been an endless source of inspiration. FLW was an architect whose designs were practically all executed in the USA, but that does not mean that one can not find FLW inspired buildings elsewhere. For instance, in the Netherlands his designs were admired by the DE STIJL mouvement and Dudok and van ‘t Hoff made buildings inspired by FLW.

A great architect and fortunately we had in the past decades several large exhibitions on his architecture and projects . One of the first was the exhibition in the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam in 1952. What makes it even more special is that it was one of the first designs Benno Wissing made for the Boymans museum.

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Wissing since 1952 has had a tremendous career and is, together with Sandberg and Crouwel one of the absolute great designers from the last century. So visit www.ftn-books.com and search for Frank Lloyd Wright or Benno Wissing and discover the many beautiful books both these great artist have made over the years.

 

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Shinkichi Tajiri (1923-2009)

Tajiri…. Photographer, Painter, sculptor, graphic artist . He has practically explored every discipline art has. His claim to fame were his large sculptures and specially the KNOTS are more than impressive. As a person he is even more fascinating, because he was in the middle of things, because of his studies and travels he had met many very important artists.

In 1949 he went to Paris to study with Ossip Zadkine and then Fernand Léger. He met Karel Appel and Corneille in Paris and shows at the 1949 COBRA exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In 1951 he went to Germany and taught at the Werkkunstschule Wuppertal. In 1955 he won a Golden Palm at Cannes, for his first short film, The Vipers, because of his experimental use of the language of film. From 1956 he lived in the Netherlands, since 1962 in Baarlo. He worked as a sculptor and painter. He exhibited at the famous Kassel documenta II, 1959; III, 1964 and IV, 1968. From 1969 Tajiri taught at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste at Berlin. 1969 and 1970 Shinkichi took pictures of every part of the Berlin Wall. In 1970 he went to Denmark and directed the award-winning documentary Bodil Joensen – en sommerdag juli 1970 about Bodil Joensen. In 1975 and 1976 he recreated the Daguerreotype: surreal portraits, nudes and daguerreotypes of the Wall.

On this last subject www.ftn-books.com has a very nice publication available. Daguerreotyoes were Tajiri’s other specialty.

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Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957)

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With a little bit of luck i will be able to visit the studio of Constantin Brâncuși in the next couple of weeks. We are planning a Paris visit and one of the things i would like to see is the studio by Constantin Brâncuși. One which i visited over 35 years ago when i was living in Paris for a year. At that time the studio was just reconstructed and could be visited in the Modern Art Museum at the Avenue Wilson. Since the studio has been relocated and now can be visited in a special building designed by architect Renzo Pian0. The building is partly build into the surface of the square, right in front of the entrance of the Centre Georges Pompidou and the only one time i could have visited it( 8 years ago)…it was closed. There were exhibitions in between, all with works by Brancusi ( Beyeler and Boymans), but to see all of these magnificent works, brought together in one place is one of the things i really am looking forward to.

There are some nice older Brancusi titles available at www.ftn-books.com

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Lucht en Water / Air and Water . Escher, Pieck , Miller and Cameron

A theme which inspired many artists through the ages. Of course in the 16th century dutch painters were known for their landscapes with water and skies, but water and sky remained important for all the centuries that came afterwards. Even M.C. Escher used in his prints these themes frequently and not long ago this theme was used on a scarf by Cordon Art to show the importance of the work. In the seventies Wim Crouwel made several catalogues for the Stedelijk Museum with this theme and one i admire most is the one to accompany the exhibition by artists Miller and Cameron who used the theme of sky and water in their exhibition . Boymans van Beuningen presented Lucy and Jorge Orta who presented their waterwerken and finally there is the one who is known to practically all Dutch….Anton Pieck who used the theme frequently.

 

wilfried

www.ftn-books.com