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One week….Lefebre gallery….day 5

Last week I acquired a large collection of catalogues from the LEFEBRE GALLERY. The collection contains 63 different exhibition catalogues all fro the period that this famous gallery was open between 1960 and 1986. A great collection which I will share in the coming 7 days….today day 1

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from top to bottom /left to right:

Ortvad , 1979( Not Lefebre , but included in the collection)

Emil Schumacher, 1968

Georges Noel, 1964

Sonderborg , 1965

Victor Four, Victor IV, 1966

Etienne Martin, 1965

Henri Michaux, 1975

Corneille, 1962

Norbert Krikke, 1968

Anton Heyboer, 1967

The series i have available at www.ftn-books.com contains 62 different titles. These publications will be listed in the upcoming 4 weeks. If there is a publication you would like to buy, please sent an email to ftnbooksandart@gmail.com and i will quote you your best preview price.

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a great Corneille cover for Ariel (1970)

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It Must have been in the mid Eighties that i lost all interest in Corneille as an artist. He repeated himself frequently and his art was commercialized by some dutch companies who made the once great art by Corneille mainstream.

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But only a decade before his art had matured . From his Cobra beginnings in the Fifties he developed his art into a personal, recognizable, colorful kind of art where his scenes were crowded with woman and birds. In those days he made several special publications on the occasion of his exhibitions and on 2 of these occasions at the galerie Ariel in Paris special books were published in a limited edition of 750 numbered copies. My guess is that less than a few hundred of these copies have survived , making these even more collectable than his lihographs from those days. One of the Ariel publications from 1970 is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com. This one is numbered 67 and contains 2 large lithographs, making this a true collectable Corneille item.

corneille ariel aa

corneille ariel x

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Dora Tuynman (1926-1979)

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On the “outskirts” of the COBRA group she operated like a true Cobra artist. In 1951 she left for Paris and joined the artist at the Rue Santeuil and became friends with Karel Appel and Corneille and somehow got influenced by everything COBRA that surrounded her . in 1997 the NRC wrote about het works that they were still fresh and vivid and compared to some works by her fellow artists never had lost their quality. When you leaf through the book that is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com, one notices that her work is far more abstract than the early COBRA works that were in many cases inspired by children.

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These works by Tuynman are more like the Klee drawings from the Twenties, but put on canvas. The publication was initiated by Mrs. E. Tuynman and published by DE DRIJVENDE DOBBER of Tom Mercuur. A keen publisher who has an eye for the undiscovered talent. The book is now available.

tuynman

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Corneille and Jaski Art (1992)

corneille koster

Jaski Art was founded in 1988 and it must have been shortly after that they represented Corneille as an artist. From that day on Corneille commercial success was far more than ever expected. AS a CBRA artist , Corneille was known for his composition and child like drawings, but as his name grew he was appreciated for his female heads, nudes and birds and in many cases a colorful comppostion soft all three elements. Personally i think Corneille of the last 3 decades is less interesteing than his early period. There are of course exceptions and one of those is the Corneille 1992 publications which contains an original  lithograph with one of his child like drawings . Signed and numbered from an edition of only 250 copies this is the one to have and available at www.ftn-books.com

It has all the qualities of his early Cobra work and illustrated why as a COBRA artist Corneille is one of the greatest.

corneille jaski cc

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Lotti van der Gaag ( 1923-1999)…the forgotten Cobra artist

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A 100% percent Cobra artist who has almost been forgotten by the public is Lotti van der Gaag. She began with sculpture on advise of Bram Bogart with who she was living in the late 40’s. In 1950 she moved to Paris where she met Karel Appel and Corneille with whom she stayed befriended during her entire life although Corneille had his objections of her joining the COBRA group. In 1974 she started with painting using the same fantasy figures she already had developed in her sculpture. When you look at these early paintings you can only draw one conclusion….Lotti van der Gaag is a Cobra artist!

What i did not know is that she was married to Kees van Bohemen , who has made a name for his  abstract expressionist paintings in dutch art. www.ftn-books has a few Lotti van der Gaag publications.

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Mathias Fels (1922-2009)… galeriste extraordinaire

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One of the great gallery owners of our town was Mathias Fels. Her started the gallery in 1955 and the gallery has since become one of the leading galleries in the world. With the death of Mathias Fels the gallery stopped, but until that date they organized some very important exhibitions and with these exhibitions catalogues were published using special designs, papers and in many cases special covers . The covers in some cases being original lithographs. As one of the leading art scene figures, Fels has become an icon for many gallery owners and together with gallery Denise Rene in Paris he always had a keen eye to present new modern artists in his gallery.

www.ftn-books.com has some beautiful and important Fels publications available.

corneille fels a

You can find an excellent interview( in french)  with Fels at:

http://www.visuelimage.com/ch/fels/

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Constant (1920-2005)

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Another Cobra artist that i have met personally ( but only for a very brief conversation about his catalogues) was Constant ( Nieuwenhuijs ). From the 3 Cobra artist that i have met personally i liked him the best, because besides his Cobra period , he developed himself into a multi talented artist. His New Babylon constructions have proven to be a vision on the future and become more and more important in art history. Even his watercolors that he made at the end of his career are to be admired. Great technique and composition make these belonging to his best works from his career. Constant has always kept a special relation with the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and because of this special relation with the museum and his former director ( Hans Locher) the museum has the most important collection from all periods out of his career. Cobra, New Babylon , paintings and drawings all are present and will prove to be important in the coming centuries.

http://www.arttube.nl/videos/constant-new-babylon

Constant will probably be one of the most important dutch artists to remember and admire for his complete oeuvre.www.ftn-books.com has some nice classic and collectable publications on Constant ( Nieuwenhuijs).

and yes….www.ftn-books.com is one of the few booksellers who can offer you the famous Constant New Babylon book by Wigley

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Asger Jorn ( 1914-1973)

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I appreciate all the COBRA mouvement artists, but if i had to chose one…it would be Asger Jorn. His paintings have a mysterious quality and within their abstraction one can always recognize a realistic element. Wether its a face, a human figure, an animal they are there …hidden within the picture, brightly colored and sometimes outlined with black. Before COBRA, Jorn was painting realistic scenes, and was an assistant to Le Corbusier, but after he met Appel, Constant and Corneille, with whom he founded COBRA and travelled to France, his style became completely abstract and strongly influenced by child drawings. He discussed this frequently with Christian Dotremont , because they both were ill with tuberculoses and treated within the same hospital in Silkeborg. In this same city, nearby his birth town an Asger Jorn museum was founded and financed by Jorn. http://www.museumjorn.dk/da/

This museum has become one of the most important ones in Denmark.

Jorn is now a classic among modern art lovers and will become more important every decade to come. www.ftn-books.com has some great Asger Jorn titles available in its inventory.

 

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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