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Sorel Etrog (1933-2014)

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For us in Europe this is a lesser known artist/sculptor. But it appears that Etrog had his exhibitions at the Marlborough gallery and Galerie d’Eendt in the mid Seventies.

In 2000, a Toronto newspaper dubbed artist Sorel Etrog the “Grand Old Man of Canadian Sculpture.” It was an apt description, after a career spanning five decades including the installation of outdoor sculptures across Toronto, Canada and beyond. Yet Etrog was much more – a painter, draughtsman, film maker and not least, a literary man. He was keen to collaborate with the great thinkers of his generation, including playwrights Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, Toronto media guru Marshall McLuhan and composer John Cage.

Etrog was born into a Jewish family in Romania in 1933. After a childhood spent in flight from the Nazis and Soviets, he immigrated with his family to Israel in 1950 where he began to study art and exhibit. In 1958 he won a scholarship to the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and moved to New York City. There, he had a chance encounter with Toronto collector and AGO patron Sam Zacks, who invited him to Canada.

Etrog permanently settled in Toronto in 1963. Recognition came quickly with museum purchases, international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (1966), and a commission to design the Canadian Film Award statue, now known as the Genie (1968). Etrog resided in our city until his death in early 2014.

www,ftn-books.com has the Marlborough publication available

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Dan Reisinger (1934-2020)

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At auction i bought a small collection of design books , previously owned and collected by Ben Bos, one of the founding members of the Total Design agency. Bos was presented with this chinese edition on Dan Reisinger who wrote a personal note and letter to Ben Bos. These are both included and the book is now fro sale at http://www.ftn-books.com.

Born in 1934 in Kanjiza, Serbia, Reisinger lost several family members in the Holocaust, including his father. He survived the Nazi occupation in a hideout and as a teenager became active in the partisan Pioneer Brigade, immigrating with his mother and stepfather to the new State of Israel in 1949. Reisinger initially lived in a transit camp and then worked as a house painter in order to earn money from almost any source. He later attended Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design as the youngest student accepted to the school at that time.

In 1954, Reisinger served in the Israeli Air Force, where he put his design skills to use art directing military publications. During this time in the Air Force he attended a class on postage-stamp design taught by the British graphic designer Abram Games, who became his mentor and friend. Subsequently, Reisinger travelled, studied, and worked in Europe: from 1957 in Brussels and then onto London where, from 1964–66, he studied stage and three-dimensional design at the Central School of Art and Design. He designed posters for Britain’s Royal Mail, and worked for other clients while making intermittent visits to Israel. In 1966 he returned permanently to Israel and established his Dan Reisinger Studio in Tel Aviv. The same year he was commissioned to design the Israeli Pavilion at the Expo ’67 in Montreal.
Reisinger soon became one of the most prolific Israeli designer of his generation and won many prizes. He designed a new logo for El Al (1972), and the 50-meter-long aluminium-cast relief of a biblical quotation in Hebrew on the exterior of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims in Jerusalem (1978). He designed three Israel Defense Forces (IDF) decorations: the Medal of Valor, the Medal of Courage and the Medal of Distinguished Service. He also created the logos for the Tel Aviv Museum of Arts, Tefen Museum of Arts, and Habima National Theatre, and the symbol and posters of the 9th-15th Maccabiah Games.

He had his first solo exhibition at the Israel Museum Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1976-77, and has since exhibited his works in Israel and around the world in numerous group and one-person exhibitions. In 1998 Reisinger was awarded the Israel Prize – one of the state’s highest honours – the first designer to be the recipient of such an award, exactly 40 years after his first award, the 1958 Brussels Expo first medal for poster design. For his 70th birthday, the Hungarian Government honoured Reisinger with a comprehensive one man show at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest.

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Günther Förg at the Gemeentemuseum in 2003

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An important discovery among the many invitations i acquired recently. It is an original sketching by Förg for what presumably could be a wall drawing in one of the rooms of the Gemeentemuseum during and after his 2003 exhibition. In that time Förg was experimenting with loosely painted forms on canvas and walls.

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On the painted paper sheet is the studio stamp of Günther Förg in Freiburg and the paper is devided into two parts. The upper part is painted with a deep green and handwritten the text Gemeentemuseum in blue ballpoint, underneath in pencil Den Haag 2003.  Left of the green a text in blue ballpoint ” Moikan (?)” The lower part of the design/drawing/painting is in a “leather brown” color and in pencil beside “Israel” is written . On the lowest part of the sheet the studio stamp in black ink.

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My educated guess is that this is a proposal for a wall drawing in one of the rooms of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and this highly collectable item is now available at www.ftn-books.com.

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the “Billy Rose sculpture garden” at the Israel Museum

I have never visted Jerusalem, but because of a recent acquisition for my inventory i want to share the experience of an actual visitor to the garden who truly enjoyed it. The catalogue of the sculpture garden is available at www.ftn-books.com

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It was a sunny Sunday morning, and I was strolling through a peaceful garden. This was the Billy Rose Art Garden, in the grounds of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. The Museum has some impressive exhibits, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and extensive collections of art and archaeology. But the Scrolls would have to wait for another time: I was here for the sculpture.

Walking Through the Billy Rose Art Garden

I had the garden almost to myself. The sounds of birdsong and distant church bells competed for my attention. The paths were lined with fragrant plants. And there were sculptures everywhere, in perfect harmony with their surroundings.

Completed in 1965, the Billy Rose Art Garden was the work of Isamu Noguchi, an American sculptor. He followed the principles of Zen design, using a variety of different materials such as concrete, gravel and water, and featuring mostly native plants. The garden is set on a steep hillside, so that panoramic views of the city are incorporated into the landscape.

Sculptures Old and New

Some of the sculptures are by well known artists. As you enter the garden you are greeted by a statue of Adam by Auguste Rodin. Later on, a sculpture by Henry Moore poses against the city skyline. But others are more modern, often by contemporary Israeli sculptors. There is a giant stainless steel apple core, and the appropriately named “Turning the World Upside Down”, which reflects and inverts its surroundings.

The modern sculptures have not always been admired by everyone. It is said that Billy Rose, the American showman who founded and gave his name to the garden, commented that they should be “melted down for bullets”! Modern visitors might well disagree. For myself, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of old and new, and the pleasure of turning every corner to find something different.

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Willem Sandberg (1897-1984) typography

It is almost a year since I tipped the readers of my blog to start to collect Willem Sandberg typography. Since, i have found some interesting examples of his excellent typography which i want to present to you. For those of you who are new in reading this blog. Willem Sandberg was a designer /typographer who became director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam for a very long period ( 1945-1963) who designed many of the publications during this period of time and who contacted and presented many of the most famous 20th century artists in the Stedelijk Museum. His publications are characterized by the use of plain ( carton like papers) and the lettering looks random, made out of torn papers. But these are very accurate designs. You can find many sources of information on Sandberg on the internet, but one of the best is still the site of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. ( http://www.stedelijk.nl ). Now here are some new and old additions to the inventory of www.ftn-books.com

 

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Ram Katzir (1969) and Your Coloring Book

 

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This dutch/Israeli graphic designer and sculptor is not very well known outside the Netherlands, but perhaps this will change in the future. He has studio’s in Amsterdam and Beijing. Until 10 years ago i did not know this artist either, but because of a fantastic pubication he made for the Stedelijk Museum ( Your coloring book) he became known to me. Far before publishers discovered the commercial value of coloring books and the soothing and comforting qualities of coloring books. This book combines both. It is an artist book and coloring book in one and still available at www.ftn.books.com

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