Tag: gemeentemuseum

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Olphaert den Otter (1955)

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First time i encountered work by Olphaert den Otter , was at the galerie van Kranendonk in the mid Nineties. After this occasion i saw works by den Otter in several group exhibitions ( if i remember well one at the Haags Gemeentemuseum). In a mix of realism and surrealism , den Otter presents his paintings and always surprises. One can discover several layers in his works and they never stop to amaze. In the last 2 years some of his paintings have become on sale at the Venduehuis auction, but i was not lucky enough to win. It shows that den Otter has established himself as one of the commercial succesful artists in the Netherlands, but i will keep trying to win at auction and maybe in the future we can add a work to our collection.

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Olphaert den Otter (Poortugaal, 1955) studied at the Willem de Kooning Academie (1976 – 1981). He works with egg tempera, often in large series. One of these, de Refuge Morphology series consisting of 127 works, was exhibited in 2008 in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. From time to time, Den Otter creates murals in pastel on location (Malta Contemporary Art and the KetelFactory, Schiedam) and animations. Alongside his activities as visual artist, he also sings countertenor in the Retorisch Kwartet and frequently lectures on cultural and philosophical themes.

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Enrico Baj ( 1924-2003)

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Enrico Baj was born in Milan on October 31, 1924, and studied at the Accademia di Brera. In 1951 he, along with Sergio Dangelo and Gianni Dova, promoted the Nuclear Movement, and had his first solo exhibition in Milan at the Galleria San Fedele. Upon meeting Asger Jorn in 1953, the two founded the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, which reacted against the forced rationalization and geometry of art, and the following year organized the International Ceramics Meetings at Albisola in Liguria, Italy.

Baj’s artistic experiments resulted in multicolored collages made from many different materials. On one hand, his work emphasises the joyful experience of painting with diverse materials; however, it also provides a social commentary and strong criticism of the contemporary world. Such is true for his Generali and Parate militari of the 1960s, and it is even more evident in works dating from the 1970s, such as I funerali dell’anarchico Pinelli (1972) and Apocalisse (1979). In the 1980s, he abandoned collage temporarily and made a series of works called Metamorfosi e Metafore (1988) in which his images were based on imagination and fantasy. In 1993, he started his Maschere tribali cycle, which consisted of assemblages that used waste materials of modern civilization to create ironic and brightly colored masks. These pieces were followed by Feltri (1993-98) and Totem (1997).

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Throughout his life, Baj was in close contact with poets and intellectuals, both in Italy and abroad, and collaborated on numerous occasions to produce prints or original multiples for several artist books. In 1999, the artist once again reconfirmed his strong links to literature by producing a series of 164 portraits inspired by the Guermantes of Marcel Proust. He also collaborated with many artists, including Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni. In 2001, he started a series of works dedicated to the history of Gilgamesh, the King of the Sumers. Enrico Baj died in Vergiate (Varese), Italy, on June 16, 2003.

Enrico Baj publications are available at www.ftn-books.com

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Anton Heyboer (continued)

 

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A few years before the pandemic (2017-2018) the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag organized an exhibitionon Anton Heyboer. Since the Sixties there was a strong connection between the museum and Heyboer , because Hans Locher , the curator at that time, was a stron fan of the early Heyboer and his choice has proven to be impeccable. Beautiful early etchings and drawings are now part of the collection of the museum and the exhibition showed that Heyboer has been developing his art through the decades. Perhaps less appealing than his eraly years, but the works from the end of his career impressed me very much. The catalogue published with this exhibition is without a doubt the best book on Heyboer since 40 years and now availabel at http://www.ftn-books.com. Heyboer’s position in dutch art is now very well established and this exhibition and catalogue show why.

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Rein Draijer (1899-1986)

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Slowly…..very very slowly ….Rein Draijer is appreciated more and more outside the Den Haag region. He is one of the painters that belong to the “DE NIEUWE HAAGSE SCHOOL” and was presented regularly at the Haags Gemeentemuseum and galeries in Den Haag. But outside Den Haag his name was hardly known. But he is important for dutch painting and Modern ART. His landscapes are filled with atmospehere and breath SIXTIES painting. He even is compared to Saenredam and Mondrian at the time his works were presented at the MORE museum in 2016.

Personally i think his paintings to be too realistic to keep me intrigued for a longer time. Still i like his paintings . The way he looks at his subject shows that he leaves out too many details and tries to make his painting as “empty” and abstract as possible.

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The 1968 Draijer catalogue that was made for his exhibition at the Haags Gemeentemuseum is now available at www.ftn-books.com

draijer hgm

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Gerrit Veenhuizen (1925-2015)

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The art of Gerrit Veenhuizen takes decades to discover and the same time to grow on you.

I first discovered the work by Veenhuizen , when Hans Locher introduced the painter to us and organized an exhibition with the artist. A large book was published with the exhibition, knowing that it would not sell but because of the promotion by Locher a beautiful book was published. It still can be bought at reasonable prices, but more important it was my first introduction to the work by Veenhuizen and at first i was not such a fan. I think his worlds were too much a language already discovered by Heyboer.

But as said…. it takes decades to grow on you and now i finally see the quality of how his works were ahead of his time. Educated by Campendonck he developed soon a style of his own and stayed true to this style, creating a world with typical symbols and figures who populated his works. He is but could also have been achild of Heyboer and Klee.

http://www.ftn-books.com has some Veenhuizen publications available including the scarce galerie 20 catalogue from 1961.

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Axel en Helena van der Kraan ( continued)

I wrote several blogs on Helena van der Kraan her photography, but never mentioned i had my first  meeting with the both of them as artists. It was at the time they made huge wooden sculptures that did move. One of these, with a giant bass fiddle was acquired by the Haags Gemeentemuseum and one was placed for a very long time at an office building at the Kortenaerkade in The Hague. The last one was special and frightened many a passer by. Every quarter of an hour he turned his wrist and looked at his watch, scaring the people who happened to pass at just that moment, Now i ahve added to my inventory 2 books on Axel en Helena and….. i want to share a special movie in which Kees Broos (curartor at the Haags Gemeentemuseum) made a video on Axel and Helena, featuring….Gerard Verdijk.

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Gilbert & George (continued)

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I have a large collection of Gilbert & George publications . Small and large ones, artist books and retropective catalogues. I asked myself why i am fascinated by these artists. My fascination started when Rudi Fuchs presented Gilbert & George at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and has grown since. The result is….. numerous publications in my inventory all on this illustrous artist couple.

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The ones of Art & Project and the Stedelijk Museum are maybe the most scarce and wanted ones, But now i have acquired , what is perhaps the most accessable book and best introduction to the art of Gilbert & george. It is the Robin Dutt book , published by PWP who shows the works of G&G over several decades and perhaps more important, the development of their art. The book is now available at www.ftn-books.com but more important is, that it feels like their partnership is now complete and any new work is a repetition of earlier ones. Gilbert & George have established themselves as one of the truly great modern art artist and it i snow time for every art lover to recognize their importance and learn to appreciate their works.

gilbert george dutt

 

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Gerard Petrus Fieret (continued)

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In 2004 the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag received a donation from Gerard Petrus Fieret, containing over 1000 photographs, drawings and other collectable items. This gift grew the collected Fieret works in the collection of the museum considerably making it the largest Fieret collection in the world. To remember the donation and to please the artist the artist was invited to make a live exhibition in which he made his drawings in one of the rooms of the museum and decorated the walls with these drawing.  If i remember well , Fieret entered the museum for some five weeks, greeting the doorman in a very grumpy way ( yes he was a grumpy old man at that time~), walked the museum hall , entered the designated room and started to draw. Drawing after drawing came out of hands and the publicity department decided to use the event to anounce an exhibition of this huge gift by the artist. They selected 81 drawings from the already considerable pile of drawings and bundled these into a specially made poster and send these out to the press ( all in house made) to announce the Fieret exhibition. Only a few dozen of these press kits were made, making this one of the most desirable and collectable Fieret items. The press kit is now for sale at www.ftn-books.com

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the Chudnovsky collection 1900-1930

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After 1989 there was a change in the relationship between Western Europe and Russia. The result of an exchange of exhibitions and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the Russian State museums and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

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There was, of course, a highly successful and visited in large numbers Pusjkin collection exhibition and on a much smaller scale a few years later the Russian Avant-Garde exhibition at the Paleis Lange Voorhout Museum curated by Franz Kaiser. An exquisite exhibition with a selection chosen from the  Abram Chudnovsky collection.  personally i think this was, after the Malevich exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum a few years earlier, an exhibition which showed the quality of Russian art in the beginning of 20th Century. Great paintings from a visionary collector who collected his fellow country men and since never has been seen again in one of the European Museums. The catalogue of this exhibition and both other catalogues are now available at http://www.ftn-books.com.

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The Triton Foundation/collection

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The Triton collection is considered to be one of the 2oo most prestigious private art collections in the world. The collection was build in a relatively short period of time but contains the most important names from the modern art world. The spectacular collection was collected by the couple Willem Cordia (1940-2011) and Marijke van der Laan. Cordia built his fortune with investing in the port of Rotterdam and oil.

The collection was transferred into a Foundation and together with the foundation, the Gemeentemuseum named a room after the Foundation. the “Triton kabinet” and in this room the most important works of art were being presented. The result a series of art books dedicated to the artists and art of the Triton foundation ( available at http://www.ftn-books.com)

The collection contains 250 important works of art. Paintings, drawings and sculptures by the most famous of all artists a.o Vincent van Gogh, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Amedeo Modigliani, Kees van Dongen, Raoul Dufy, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondriaan, Francis Picabia, Alberto Giacometti, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Günther Uecker, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella en Lucian Freud.