Tag: fuchs

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Remy Zaugg (1943-2005)

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Remy Zaugg was a Swiss painter, primarily known as a conceptual artist. He played an important role as both a critic and observer of contemporary culture, especially with regards to the perception of space and architecture.

This is how the biography of Zaugg on Widewalls starts, but there is of course much more to be told about Zaugg. Zaugg will be one of the great Swiss artists and because of the interest the dutch curators had and still have in Swiss artists ( there are many swiss artists in dutch public collections ) these artists are presented frequently in the Netherlands. Look at the history of the Gemeentemuseum ( Hodler, Gerstner, Lohse ) Stedelijk Museum ( Tinguely, Raetz and Lohse ) and the van Abbemuseum ( Lohse and Zaugg).

They all have a history with Swiss artists. The last one , the van Abbemuseum had a special exhibition on Remy Zaugg. and with this one of the first typically “RUDI FUCHS” catalogues was published. Hardly any illustrations, but functional text in a functional sober design…personally i love these catalogues and some of them are available at www.ftn-books.com. I will highlight two of them in this blog. Both are rare and typically for the van ~Abbemuseum books published in the eighties. The catalogues by Zaugg and Ian Wilson are well worth collecting.

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Rennweg by Rudi Fuchs (1985)

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Rudi Fuchs (1984)

When i first learned that Rudi Fuchs would become the new director of the Haags Gemeentemuseum, i started following his career back and noticed some impressive exhibitions which were held at the Castello di Rivoli near Torino a modern art museum of which he was artistic director between 1984 and 1990.

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The artists that he presented at that location were soon to become household names in the years he was director and head curator of the Haags Gemeentemuseum. The “Rennweg” book with art by Nitsch, Brus, Pichler , Attersee and Rainer was one of the first from the Castello di Rivoli that was available at the bookshop of the Haags Gemeentemuseum and now the circle is completed since i recently bought a” lot” at auction…all from the former library of Rudi Fuchs and within these…the RENNWEG catalogue which is now available at www.ftn-books.com

rennweg

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Barry Flanagan (1941-2009)

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Barry Flanagan, a protege of Rudi Fuchs, presented this artist at different venues on several occasions. The van Abbemuseum and the Stedelijk Museum among them. This way creating a platform for this artist who, after the exhibitions in dutch museums , could count on a loyal following of admirers. He began his career as a minimalist working in folded cloth, but later became Britain’s best-known and most controversial modernist, internationally renowned for his colossal bronze figures of leaping hares.

That said i personally am impressed with his small scale art. His drawings, linocuts and lithographs are like dreamlike landscapes with an abstract twist and bright colors, making these far more intimate. For us in the Netherlands it is still hard to find the nice publications published on this artist, because the edition size was on all occasions “small”. Less than 1000 copies were produced of his catalogue of which most part was over the years destroyed. His following may be loyal and admiring, but it is too small too sell a complete edition of his art catalogues. www.ftn-books.com has some Flanagan titles available.

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Luciano Fabro (1936-2007)

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Luciano Fabro…an italian artist rooted in the ARTE POVERA and perhaps a little bit forgotten nowadays.

But Fabro stays very imortant for Modern Art, since his works are very much in line with other great artist from that era. Castellani and Manzoni were of great influence to him and in 1958, after he saw Lucio Fontana’s work at Venice Biennale, Fabro moved to Milan where he spent the rest of his life pursuing his artistic career.

Fabro was involved in the Arte Povera group, which was interested in experimenting with industrial and natural materials, focusing on process, language and the body. Fabro’s best known works were sculptural reliefs of Italy made out of glass, steel, bronze, gold and even soft leather. The signature unorthodox, ‘poor’ materials in his works include steel tubes, cloth, newspapers, and wax; the artist, however, often used also traditional and expensive art materials such as gold, marble, and bronze. At the height of the ARTE POVERA group, the Boymans van Beuningen Museum organized and exhibition with the works by Luciano Fabro and after this exhibition other exhibitions followed in the Netherlands. The catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Barrie Cooke (1931-2014)

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For me Barrie Cooke stands for the excellent taste Rudi Fuchs has in art and the beautiful designed catalogue Gracia Lebbink made for the Cooke exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in 1992. I can not remember if Cooke was present at the opening, but i still remember the first impression his paintings made on me when i first saw them in the exhibition rooms in the Gemeentemuseun. These paintings were personal and overwhelming and reminded me of the ones Francis Bacon made.

left Cooke and right Bacon

At that time Fuchs had become very interested in Irish art and presented Cooke shortly after he had had an exhibition with works by Jack B. Yeats

An artists’ artist, he won enormous respect from his peers over several generations for his utter commitment and the integrity of his vision. He was a passionate fisherman and the natural world was always at the heart of his work. His figure paintings and portraits are also exceptional.

His paintings are cherished for their dynamic, immediate, visceral connection with their subject matter. Early training at Skowhegan in the US and at Oskar Kokoschka’s School of Vision in Salzburg helped to shape the urgent vitality of his pictorial approach – a vitality reflected in the artist’s personality.

Having grown up in Bermuda and studied in the US, he went to England in 1954 to revisit his roots but found little to engage him. So he took a ferry to Ireland and, he said, felt at home even as he walked down the gangplank.

Irish life
He settled in rural Co Clare where he and his first wife, Harriet Cooke, lived in some poverty. Later he moved to Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, with ceramic artist Sonja Landweer, who introduced him to Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on natural processes. His next move was to a remote house overlooking Lough Arrow in Co Sligo.

The Barrie Cooke Gemeentemuseum catalogue designed by Gracia Lebbink is available at www.ftn-books.com

cooke a

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Anthon Beeke (1940-2018)

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This morning i learned that one of the greatest of all dutch graphic designers, Anton Beeke, died in an Amsterdam hospital, yesterday on the 25th of September. Born in 1940 he soon became part of Fluxus and Provo and was one of the famous names in the AMSTERDAM art world in the sixties. He even became later a contributing partner of Total Design, the agency which was founded by Wim Crouwel ao. I mention this because where Total design was one of the first agencies to apply the computer in designing, Beeke stayed true to his own method, the typical way of composing an image with “camera, scissors and glue”.

His images are strong and stood out and drew immediate attention to the subject. One of his best known designs was the alphabet composed with nude woman.

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It was a meant and searched for reaction on the New Alphabet by Crouwel. There are several Beeke publications available at www.ftn-books.com

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Hamish Fulton (1946)

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An earlier blog on Fulton told the story i met Fulton and he graciously signed 20 copies of his book “100 walks” to be sold in the shop of the Gemeentemuseum, but this time i want to tell you about the special publications Fulton has made in the Netherlands. As far as i know there are 4 publications that are worth mentioning of which 3 are available at www.ftn-books.com.

  • the Art & Project publication is rare and very hard to find
  • the 100 walks is available at www.ftn-books.com
  • the van Abbemuseum / Hamish Fulton is available
  • the Stedelijk Museum Hamish Fulton publication from 1973 is the rarest of them all and…..available

These publications are real finds when you find one and true artist books which are highly collectable Fulton items. Hamish Fulton is becoming more an more important, s as long as these publications are available add them to your collection.

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Henk Visch (1950)

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The first time i read about Visch was in the Metropolis M magazine in the early Eighties and the first time i encountered his Art was at the van Abbemuseum  after i had visited the studio of Piet Dirkx. At that visit Piet and I spoke about the works we were going to see at the van Abbemuseum and i learned that Piet knew Henk Visch quit well and even had exhibited at one time in Eindhoven together with him. Since, the FTN collection on Henk Visch is growing steadily and some of them are available at www.ftn-books.com.

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Henk Visch is one of the talents that gathered a loyal following. In Germany his name is still getting more important with every exhibitions organized with his works and because his importance for dutch art is undisputed , the Hollandsche Meesters series devoted a special on him:

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Donald Judd at the van Abbemuseum

Rudi Fuchs was the admirer and curator who convinced Donald Judd to have a large retrospective at the van Abbemuseum. Judd had his entrance into the dutch Museum scene with Enno Develing who had organized, with all important minimal art artists, exhibitions at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in the Sixties . Judd was one of them and since the popularity of Minimal Art in the Netherlands grew steadily. The van Abbemuseum made an exhibition with Judd in 1987, after which exhibitions another one with Judd, Fuchs and Jitta was held on the prints by Donald Judd at the Gemeentemuseum. It was one of the last exhibitions Rudi Fuchs curated for the van Abbemuseum before he switched to the Gemeentemuseum as a director and made this print exhibition. Fuchs was a great fan, because together with the print exhibition he ordered furniture, desks and even a complete parquet floor all done by Judd of which only the floor remains at the Escher Museum at the Paleis Lange Voorhout location. The rest “disappeared” , was damaged,  or was sold during the last 2 decades.

The blog is to point out that this is an important catalogue which is now available at www.ftn-books.com together with some other publications. As mentioned …Enno Develing wast the first European curator who presented the Minimal Art movement and his artists at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. Here is the extremely important catalogue of this exhibition which i gladly make available for my readers. Click the MINIMAL ART link below and read the PDF version of this rare and very important catalogue.

MINIMAL ART

 

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Hans Haacke (1936)

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His career spans now a period of nearly 60 years and he has always been a frontrunner in the world of art. Perhaps yu can compare him with Damien Hirts, but do not forget that there is a difference of time between them of 3 decades. Haacke never reached the stature of a Damien Hirst, but when his works emerged and were introduced into the art scene… literally every large and important Modern Art museum in the world wanted a piece of the action. Haacke was “hot”. Moma , Tate and Museum Ludwig all started to collect Hans Haacke at a large scale.

In 1978 Haacke was asked for a one man show at the van Abbemuseum / Eindhoven ( catalogue available at www.ftn-books.com)  and with this show, the Netherlands started to know Hans Haacke as an artist. Nowadays his art is less prominent present in the collections of these large museums, but i am convinced this will change in the not so far away future, because i think Haacke is important for the art of Seventies and Eighties. A forerunner for the art made by the well respected British artist like Hirst and Tracey Emin. Haacke deserves a place among them. His contribution to art is a valuable one and deserves to be recognized as such.

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