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Joost Swarte and HUMO (continued)

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Joost Swarte has been drawinh and designing covers for well repected magazines for over four decades now. Drawing covers for Vrij Nederland, The New Yorker, Raw magazine and many more, but one contribution which has been continuing for over 30 years now,stands out and is for the Flemish magazine HUMO.

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He made dozens and dozens of covers over the years and many of these were published in small portfolio’s. A collection well worth starting now. http://www.ftn-books.com has the portfolio “TWEE POLEN” now available. A beautiful start or addition for your Joost Swarte collection.

swarte polen a

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Ella Riemersma (1903-1993)

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Together with Rie Cramer  she became one of the foremost (female) illustrators in the Netherlands. Her style, personal but a typical derivate of the great Art Deco drawings she had seen in her youth. Open, colorful and more detailed when compared with the best work of Rie Cramer and rooted and inspired by her birth province Zeeland where she draws inspiration from.

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The Zeeuwse Bibliotheek held an exhibition in 2010 and published together with ~ZOO a great book on Ella Riemersma which is now available at http://www.ftn-books.com.

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Anton Pieck in fashion again.

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People from my generation remember the many Post and Christmas cards by Anton Pieck each family received . I even remember my parents chosing a stork with baby in his beak as a birth announcement. Pieck was huge….Piewck was popular and …Pieck stood for the most famous fairy tale park in the Netherlands…..de Efteling….

But after i few decades people got tired of the romantic scenes, populated by Dickens figures. Yes, the “DE EFTELING” attraction park was still there, but only because it had grown into a full blown entertainment park and the fairy tale forrest was almost forgotten.

But some 15 years ago , because some originals fetched excellent prices at auction, people started to notice Anton Pieck again. All because they recognized the quality of his great illustrations and drawings of town scenes and landscapes. There was of course a small  Anton Pieck Museum, but the Frans Hals Museum / de Hallen in Harlem was the first to dedicate a retrospective to Anton Pieck, the artists, in 2008.  A popular well attended exhibition which published a great catalogue together with the exhibition. ( now available at http://www.ftn-books. com) and these days i am selling Anton Pieck books all over the world and people collect and appreciate them. Anton Pieck is in fashion again.

anton pieck hallen

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the early Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

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Andy Warhol is known for his Pop Art and Factory years mostly, but at one time there was an early Andy Warhol . An artist who tried to survivve by taking up illustration jobs and what i personally like about these years is that his art is more poetic, you can even call it “sweet”. Cats, boots, lace everything that was in later years not used as an art object you can find in these early years.

Perhaps artistically these are not the strongest years of Warhol as an artist  and certainly not the most appreciated, but his drawings are very detailed and in some cases amazing. The cats and shoes are lovely, but for me nothing out of the ordinary. But how about these 2 heads…one a detailed pen drawing the other almost the saem but filled in with gold leaf, making it a spectacular drawing and a drawing to admire.

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There are not many books on these early years available, but there is one i can truly recommend. It is a german catalogue for an exhibition held in 2000 in the Hamburger Hof, where the Marx collcetion of early Warhol was presented. The book is availabel at www.ftn-books.com

warhol marx

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Saul Steinberg (1914-1999)

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….and now for the other Steinberg…SAUL STEINBERG.

First i must say that writing a blog on Steinberg, can not do justice to the excellent site , which the Steinberg foundation has constructed on the life, times and art of Saul Steinberg. You can visit the site at : http://saulsteinbergfoundation.org

But some personal notes on the artist. Saul Steinberg is a very well known artist in Europe. He had his exhibitions at the Maeght galleries in the Sixties and Seventies and both the Stedelijk Museum and the Boymans van Beuningen museum in the Netherlands organized exhibitions on the artist. In the beginning i always had considered Steinberg to be an illustrator and not the artist he later became to me. Later i realized to look at his art in a way that his drawings were meant to be seen. A citation from his site makes this clear :

Saul Steinberg defined drawing as “a way of reasoning on paper,” and he remained committed to the act of drawing. Throughout his long career, he used drawing to think about the semantics of art, reconfiguring stylistic signs into a new language suited to the fabricated temper of modern life. Sometimes with affection, sometimes with irony, but always with virtuoso mastery, Saul Steinberg peeled back the carefully wrought masks of 20th-century civilization.

This is an artist to be discovered by a far larger audience. At this moment i think he is the lesser of both Steinberg’s  i recently wrote a blog on, but perhaps time will prove me wrong and i will think of his art just the way around in a few years. www.ftn-books.com has some nice and rare Saul Steinberg publications available.

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Jan Rothuizen ( 1968)

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Jan Rothuizen illustrations are a joy and last month on a Thursday morning i was triggered by one he did on the Sculpture garden of the Kroller Muller museum. The drawings overflow with detail, have a signature of their own and should be shared and known worldwide. He is unique in his drawings and the approach of his subjects. Just look at this drawing he made of the Kroller Muller museum ( Museum Kroller Muller catalogues are available at www.ftn-books.com )

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follow rothuyizen at his site or the Volkskrant site:

Home

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2019/jan-rothuizen/

 

 

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Fiep Westendorp (1916-2004)

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Well, this one is on the border of true art… the illustrations of Fiep Westendorp are highly original and recognizable and they even sell nowadays at art prices, but first and foremost these are great quality book illustrations ( mainly for the ones written by Annie M.G. Schmidt) . Fiep Westendorp is a well established name in the dutch illustrator scene and because many of our generation have read the novels by Annie M.G. they also know the illustrations by Westendorp. Pluk en de Pettefelte, Jip en Janneke and other could not exist without the images created by Fiep Westendorp and she is now collected not only in the Netherlands, but all over the world. Great fun illustrations which deserve a large audience. Some Westendorp titles are available at http://www.ftn-books.com

 

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Pan Andrea (continued)… a series of illustrations

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Perhaps not very well known is that Pat Andrea had a career as an illustrator before his paintings rose to fame . Interesting to know is that the strange atmosphere and surreal situations in his paintings have an origin and that origin is his many illustrations he has made during his life. In the Seventies a series of books by herman Pieter de Boer were published by Elsevier in which all illustrations were done by Pat Andrea.

andrea set a

andrea set b

The series was quite popular but the quality of the illustrations was realized by many after Pat Andrea had received a retrospective abroad and people could see the link between the illustrations and his larger scaled works. The series is hard to find nowadays ( www.ftn-books.com has it available) and for those that understand and can read dutch the stories are all excellent and a little bit like Roald Dahl short stories, but for all remain the illustrations within each volume. Each book contains approximately 25 illustrations all exclusively done by Pat Andrea and all specially made to fit the story. I love these illustrations, because in many of them one can recognize later subjects for is beautiful paintings. These books deserve to be collected.

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Marjolein Bastin (1943)

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This morning i had a discussion with my wife about the qualities of the illustrations by Marjolein Bastin. Is it art?….NO…are these among the best illustrations one  can find on nature and birds….YES. Bastin has become world famous over the years and her works are published all over the world and she even had a Museum presentation in Den Bosch, but this exhibition does not make it art. Specially her series of cards for Hallmark contributed largely to her fame.  Her craftsmanship is without a doubt of the highest quality and her subjects appeal to practically all, but because her works have a feminine touch they therefore mostly appeal to women. For me this is not art as i look at art, but i can respect the meaning of others on this subject. What i personally do like about Bastin’s works is her illustrations for children books. Her VERA series is great to read to young children and fascinating to look at and discover the little details in her drawings. Since i discovered that her works are admired and collected all over the world i started to build a large inventory of her classic publications in my store. So there are many Bastin titles available at

www.ftn-books.com. Please have a look and use for this weekend the discount code BASTIN10 to receive an immediate discount on all your purchases.

 

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Elsa Beskow ( 1874-1953)

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Is this serious art?….

No probably not, but since i have a great personal interest in book illustrations i want to share this with you. Elsa Beskow is one of the greatest illustrators the world has known in the last century. This scandinavian woman ( Norwegian father and Swedish mother ). Has made some of the greatest children’s books ever. Timeless stories with great illustrations and suitable for children of all ages ( 8-88 years as TinTin says). And since it is sometimes hard to find this series of Beskow books  . I want you to know that i managed to purchase a nice small library containing 7 of these classic Beskow titles. Enough…. here are the covers…and tomorrow i promise to blog on real art again.

www.ftn-books.com