The gallery was founded by Bart van de Ven and Peer Veneman. In the beginning of its existence the gallery revolved around a tight-knit group of artists who worked closely together, both professionally and socially. A group of young Dutch artists in the postmodern 1980s, including Rob Scholte, Henk Visch and Fortuijn O’Brien, were part of the scene around the gallery and they became very well known. At that time, they stood at the center of the Dutch art world.
The Living Room was launched in a small third-floor apartment in East Amsterdam in 1981 by art history student Bart van de Ven and artist Peer Veneman. The gallery’s focus was on painting and sculpture, most often from a select group of Dutch artists working in the typically anti-academic, ‘wild’ style of the early 1980s. After moving to Amsterdam’s city centre in 1983, and up until its closure in 1993, the activity of the gallery became increasingly formalised. The gallery’s production of catalogues and its participation in several international art fairs, underlined The Living Room’s professional acclaim and secured their influence well beyond the borders of the Netherlands.
The Living Room is now closed for a very long time, But when you look at their list of exhibitions you realize that here is a “classic” among dutch galleries and their publications are well worth collecting. Some of these are available at www.ftn-books.com
Some of the galleries are out there for ages. For example Denise Rene in Paris and Willy Schoots in Antwerp but there is also Deweer gallery who have a presence in the gallery world since 1979. When you visit the gallery it is more like a small sized museum than a typical gallery. A huge surface, situated in an old factory with separate rooms, make it suitable to present a diversified collection. Artists from the gallery range from Jan Fabre to Mark Wallinger. www.ftn-books.com carries some sold out Deweer publications from the last decades.
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The Deweer site gives the following information on the history of the gallery:
Deweer Gallery (est. 1979) is a leading second-generation gallery specialized in national and international contemporary art. Gerald and Bart Deweer are its owners and directors. The gallery is located in a building with approximately 1,200 m² of exhibition spaces in the rural town of Otegem, in Belgium. Deweer Gallery, representing more than twenty artists, focuses exclusively on work that evinces a combination of critical and poetic qualities. Well-known for its representation of artists such as Stephan Balkenhol, Jan Fabre, Günther Förg, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov and Panamarenko, the gallery has a reputation for building artists. Deweer Gallery has been working together with these artists for more than two/three decades. The early detection of talent is its trademark. It is evident in, among other things, their current supporting of artists such as Melissa Gordon, George Little, Enrique Marty, Benjamin Moravec, Nasan Tur, Anna Vogel and Andy Wauman.
HISTORY
From father to sons
Mark Deweer’s passion for collecting art led to the creation of Deweer Gallery in 1979. Mark was the driving force and the initiator. His nose for artistic talent and his business acumen, along with the unconditional support of his wife Marleen Deweer, made for an ideal combination that would make the realization of his dream possible.
Raised surrounded by art, their two sons, Gerald and Bart Deweer, know the world of art from within. Gradually, they took over the management of the gallery. Gerald and Bart want the gallery to continue to play a dynamic, ambitious and leading role on the international contemporary art scene. They aim to continue to promote artists on the basis of strong internal/external exhibitions and participations in international art fairs such as Art Cologne (since 1995), ARCO Madrid (since 2001) and recently also miart (Fiera Milano).
Building
Since the middle of the 1980s, Deweer Gallery is located in an unusually spacious building that once housed a small industrial enterprise. In 2011-2012, the spaces of the gallery were thoroughly renovated. Far-reaching architectural interventions were carried out, such as a doubling of the publicly accessible spaces (the lobby and three exhibition rooms) to a total area of approximately 1200m². In September 2012, the new gallery opened with the group exhibition ‘Re-Opening’, which clearly showcased the rejuvenation and renewal of the gallery program.
Annely Juda CBE (born Anneliese Emily Brauer; September 23, 1914 – August 13, 2006) was a German art dealer known for founding the Annely Juda Fine Arts gallery in London. Notable artists represented have included Anthony Caro, David Hockney and Leon Kossoff. Juda introduced several Japanese artists to the London art market.
Since i have become an art book dealer who specializes in art and museum publications i frequently encountered publications by the Annely Juda gallery. When you look at their histoy of gallery presentations you encounter many of the great names in Modern Art. Klee, Bellmer, Christo, Honnegger and many others. As with other galleries that started in the sixties, they have build a loyal following of visitors, collectors and admirers. Not only because their gallery presentations are among the very best, but also because of their publications which are published to accompagny their exhibitions. These publications are a “niche” in the art book collectors world, but hard to find and certainly well worth searching for becauzse they are among the best art publications from the last few decades. www.ftn-books.co has some of them available.
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.
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You can find an excellent interview( in french) with Fels at:
Those of you following this blog , know of my admiration for the gallery Denise Rene and in 1959 they presented one of my favorite artists…..Jean Arp.
Jean Arp was at that not the name he is nowadays but his works were collected by some who thought his works were great. If ever there is an Arp for sale, it draws interest from all over the world , but at the time of this 1959 exhibition at Denise Rene there were so many great works for sale. Drawings, Paintings, sculptures, bronzes….all were presented and for sale. I can not offer an original Arp at www.ftn-books.com, but this great and rare catalogue comes for sale at my site today.
I always wondered why the works by Geneviève Claisse looked so familiar and were at the same time original and authentic. After reading some parts of her biography i found out that she is related to Auguste Herbin and that shows. Her use of form is somehow different from Herbin’s, because Geneviève Claisse is a fierce supporter of the rounded shapes where as Herbin uses Geometrical ones. At the same time the use of color and contrast is with both almost the same. Geneviève Claisse is represented by, galerie Denise Rene, one of the best galleries in the world, which also made some great catalogues which are available at www.ftn-books.com
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A relative to Auguste Herbin, born in the same place, her painting vocation was born through reading the magazine Art d’aujourd’hui, tribune of geometrical abstraction.
Claisse is the great niece of abstract painter Auguste Herbin, a founder of the Parisian association of artists Abstraction-Création. Herbin saw Claisse’s work for the first time when she was eighteen years old, and encouraged her to continue painting. In Herbin’s mind, Claisse was “le successeur désigné par le destin et par l’hérédité” (“the successor appointed by destiny and heredity”). Like Herbin, Claisse’s work shows a devotion to the ideals of formal purity and the perfection of execution. At this young age she worked tirelessly, often working at night after a day in the studio, carefully painting abstract forms on bold, colorful canvases.
photograph published with the permission of Peter Stark / copyright Peter Stark
At the time the Gemeentemuseum organized the Francis Bacon exhibition I contacted a colleague at the Hugh Lane gallery ( http://www.hughlane.ie) for purchasing their excellent Bacon posters to resell them in the shop of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. (The Hugh Lane is also the place where the original Bacon studio was rebuilt and permanently shown to the public). After the initial purchase of Bacon material we kept in contact and when i started my own shop on the internet i started reselling these posters on eBay and in my FTN shop. I bought enough of them , but forgot to list them on eBay in the last 10 years and lost track of them. Now i found them again , stacked away, but in perfect condition and can offer them again for sale. Please look for them and other Bacon material at www.ftn-books.com and search for Bacon.
I always believed that Copley was as much appreciated in the US as he was appreciated in the Netherlands and Germany, But the reality must have been different since i read a short article on his life. His sixties works were not appreciated and understood in the US. People thought his work was pornographic, but in Europe there was a different understanding about these works . Here they were thought to be erotic and because of this different approach to these great works, they were presented in a solo exhibition within the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1966. Accompanied by a great Wim Crouwel catalogue, which is available at www.ftn-books.com.
This appreciation of his art in the Netherlands, must have resulted in the admiration for dutch artist from the sixties and seventies by his daughter Claire who had an influential gallery in the early seventies in which she presented Ader, Dibbets and van Elk who all have become well known outside the Netherlands
If you look at these paintings now you can only ask yourself why these are being found to be pornographic…..These are great “erotic” Pop Art paintings.
CPLY X-Rated
Copley’s works in the 1970s focused on his own understating of differences and challenges between men and women in romantic and sexual relationships. His works were now erotic, even pornographic. In 1974 he exhibited these new works at what was then the New York Cultural Center in Columbus Circle, New York in a show titled “CPLY X-Rated.” These pieces were a sudden change from his previous romantic whimsical periods. The American public had difficulty with the material, for which Copley expressed, “Americans… don’t know the difference between eroticism and pornography. Because eroticism has always existed in art. And pornography has never necessarily been in art. Copley’s experienced greater feedback in Europe, where the work was then well received. In conjunction with the New York Cultural Center Show there was a special “CPLY X-Rated Poster and Catalog.
The Claire S. Copley Gallery was a Los Angeles gallery on La Cienega Boulevard that existed from 1973-1977. Together with the galleries of Eugenia Butler, Rolf Nelson, Nick Wilder, and Riko Mizuno, the Claire Copley Gallery played an important role in the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s and 1970sThe gallery provided a venue for emerging American and European minimalist and Conceptual artists, among them Bas Jan Ader, Terry Allen, Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, avid Lamelas, William Leavitt, Allan McCollum, and Allen Ruppersberg. ( part of the above information was found on Wikipedia)
Artist/ Author: Oliver Boberg
Title : Memorial
Publisher: Oliver Boberg
Measurements: Frame measures 51 x 42 cm. original C print is 35 x 25 cm.
Condition: mint
signed by Oliver Boberg in pen and numbered 14/20 from an edition of 20
