Born in Switzerland in 1937, Niele Toroni rose to fame in an era that other Swiss artists were very much under the influence of constructivism…. Lohse and Honegger among them. Toroni left that stage behind him and developed a minimal style of his own. The main difference between these two and Toroni is that Toroni progressed his art into a form of MINIMAL ART in which he altered the space by painting with a regular space between them brushstrokes in squares onto a surface using one specific color. He usually uses one specific brush no 50. The imprints made with this n°50 paintbrush are repeated at regular intervals of 30 cm. His works are found in many modern art museum collections including the Stedelijk museum and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. In which one of the 4 Staircases is painted by Toroni ( the others by LeWitt, Forg and Tuzina).
These four staircases are there for over 25 years now and have proven to be very important In Situ works of art. All artist have become famous contemporary artists and really make one look at these staircases with different eyes. They are not ordinary staircases any longer , but works of art and part of a great collection.
Marfa Texas…that is where the Chinati Foundation is settled. The Foundation was an initiative by Donald Judd who founded this in 1979. Since buildings were eerected and exhibitions were being held with friends and admired artists. There were exhibitions with works by John Chamberlain, an installation by Dan Flavin occupying six former army barracks, and works by Carl Andre, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley. Each artist’s work is installed in a separate building on the museum’s grounds.
One of the main buildings is called the Arena. It was built in the 1930s as a gymnasium for the soldiers at Fort D.A. Russell. After the fort closed in 1946, the gym floor was torn up for the wood, and sand was laid to provide an indoor arena for horses. In the mid 1980s, Judd restored the building, which was largely dilapidated. Judd left the long strips of concrete that had originally supported the wooden floor, and filled the intervening spaces with gravel. For practical considerations, Judd poured a large concrete area by the kitchen at the south end, and a smaller area at the north end of the building’s interior. These two areas comprise half of the total area of the building. Judd also added a sleeping loft and designed the outer courtyard, which includes areas for eating, bathing, and a barbecue. There are two works by David Rabinowitch installed in the building: one on the ground floor (Elliptical Plane in 3 Masses and 4 Scales, 1971-72) and one in the loft (6-Sided Bar, III, 1969). These works are on long-term loan from the Judd Foundation.
Chinati is like a Disney park for the Minimal art admirer. Everything breathes Minimal Art and the Judd designs make it even more special. There are some very nice Donald Judd books available at www.ftn-books.com including one publication by the Chinati foundation.
I chose these 3 artists to tell you something on Minimal Art in the Netherlands. These 3 artists were the first to be invited to have an exhibition on Minimal Art in 1968,. The exhibition was curated by Enno Develing and the catalogue published with this exhibition has become one of the rarest of dutch museum catalogues from the last half century. I am fortunate to still have it available in PDF, because this one was so rare i decided, at the time i was working as a bookseller/publsher for the Haags Gemeentemuseum to buy one to turn it into PDF files and so making it available for collectors and visitors. Thanks to Ap Gewald, who had the original copy and lent it to me for this purpose, this project became possible. A good decision, because it has become a very hard to find catalogue and because of its importance it is still available for students and collectors alike in PDF.
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For all customers ordering in the next week, i make this catalogue available on request and sent it by Wetransfer. But because of this long time relation of these 3 artists, all three of them have made special editions with the museum shop. Sol LeWitt made painted tiles, Carl Andre small copper plates in editions of 1/1 and Donald Judd, made brightly colored furniture for the bookshop in the early nineties. Of course these products are all completely sold out, but what is still available, but is increasingly becoming more scarce every day, is the Museum publications and artist books by these artists. Specially Sol LeWitt works are harder to find each
month, but i am proud to have one of the 1972 editions by Sol LeWitt in my inventory. It is the Macerata edition of 8 original /signed silkscreens by Sol LeWiit in its original white plastic container.
And because we have to celebrate a milestone on Facebook there is of course a discount code (valid for only 2 days) , which gives a 10% discount : FBminimal10
Please take a look at the many beautiful Minimal Art books that are available at:
Lawrence Weiner is one the the leading artists within Conceptual Art .
The first time i daily encountered a work by Lawrence Weiner was when curator Flip Bool of the Gemeentemuseum had bought a magnificent large one for the entrance hall. I noticed the forms and strong meaning of the sentences used and learned to appreciate it.
Since, i have been collecting books on Weiner in every possible way . Other museum publications, abroad art locations, galleries and auctions all had some in them, so over the years a small collection was formed and some are available at www.ftn-books.com
Later i realized that so many publications were published in the Netherlands, because he frequently stayed over here and made contributions to many other museums in the Netherlands. Notably tothe van Abbemuseum and the Stedelijk Museum have. Both have several works by Weiner in their collections.
The last time i encountered a work by Weiner (unexpectedly) was in Ljubljana, where at the facade of the Modern Art Museum a large Weiner was fixed. It gave me the same feeling as the one in the Gemeentemuseum. It changes the way you look at something and makes you think about its text…..it is great art.
Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks (such as Stone Field Sculpture, 1977 in Hartford, CT and Lament for the Children, 1976 in Long Island City, NY) to more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor of an exhibition space (such as 144 Lead Square, 1969 or Twenty-fifth Steel Cardinal, 1974). In 1988, Andre was tried and acquitted in the death of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.
This is how the text on Wikipedia starts on this great artist. Together with Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd he is recognized as being one of the artists who started the Minimal Art mouvement. Specially in the late sixties these three names were presented in group exhibitions on Minimal Art. In 1968 the Haags Gemeentemuseum was the first museum in Europe to hold an exhibition on Minimal Art, curated by Enno Develing who later became one of the authorities on Minimal Art and was a long life friend of Sol LeWitt after the exhibition was held.
Just a small story on some of the great art which was sold through the shop of the Gemeentemuseum. In 1986 the museum held its 50 years birthday celebration and together with this event some special art works were produced by famous artists….among them Carl Andre…he made some unique small copper plate pieces together with a drawing. If i remember correctly there were 8 of them. All sold instantly…..and i did NOT buy one…what a pitty ;-(
The most crucial event in his career is the death of his wife Ana Mendieta
In 1979 Andre first met Ana Mendieta through a mutual friendship with artists Leon Golub and Nancy Spero at AIR Gallery in New York City. Andre and Mendieta eventually married in 1985, but the relationship ended in tragedy. Mendieta fell to her death from Andre’s 34th story apartment window in 1985 after an argument with Andre. There were no eyewitnesses. A doorman in the street below had heard a woman screaming “No, no, no, no,” before Mendieta’s body landed on the roof of a building below. Andre had what appeared to be fresh scratches on his nose and forearm, and his story to the police differed from his recorded statements to the 911 operator an hour or so earlier. The police arrested him. Andre was charged with second degree murder. He elected to be tried before a judge with no jury. In 1988 Andre was acquitted of all charges related to Mendieta’s death
The works by Andre are still very much visible in the collection of the Gemeentemuseum and the last addition of ‘WEIR” was done by Rudi Fuchs in 1988/1989 after the Carl Andre exhibition of 1987. The catalogue and other Carl Andre books are available at www.ftn-books.com
The 1968 Minimal Art / Enno Develing catalogue was published in PDF as a reprint and because i still have this available in my personal collection i can offer all purchasers of a Carl Andre item a copy of this in PDF file. Please let me know with your order that you want the PDF file sent by email.
Minimal Art, but for me completely different because of the great change his art makes to its direct environment. Colors, size and composition of the lights change the room where the light sculptures are exhibited completely.
There must be a wealth of unfinished projects, because Flavin generally conceived his sculptures in editions of three or five, but would wait to create individual works until they had been sold to avoid unnecessary production and storage costs. Until the point of sale, his sculptures existed as drawings or exhibition copies. As a result, the artist left behind more than 1,000 unrealized sculptures when he died in 1996.
His earliest works were exhibited in the van Abbemuseum in 1966. The Netherlands were at that time one of the earliest countries to adopt the Minimal Artists. Major exhibitions by LeWitt, Andre and Judd in the late 60’s were held in Den Haag and Amsterdam.
Flavin realized his first full installation piece, greens crossing greens (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green), for an exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 1966. Flavin’s “corridors”, for example, control and impede the movement of the viewer through gallery space. They take various forms: some are bisected by two back-to-back rows of abutted fixtures, a divider that may be approached from either side but not penetrated (the color of the lamps differs from one side to the other). The first such corridor, untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), was constructed for a 1973 solo exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum, and is dedicated to a local gallerist and his wife. It is green and yellow; a gap (the width of a single “missing” fixture) reveals the cast glow of the color from beyond the divide. In subsequent barred corridors, Flavin would introduce regular spacing between the individual fixtures, thereby increasing the visibility of the light and allowing the colors to mix.[24]
By 1968, Flavin had developed his sculptures into room-size environments of light. That year, he outlined an entire gallery in ultraviolet light at documenta 4 in Kassel, Germany. In 1992, Flavin’s original conception for a 1971 piece was fully realized in a site-specific installation that filled the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s entire rotunda on the occasion of the museum’s reopening.
www.ftn-books.com has many titles on Minimal Art and some on Dan Flavin
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo
Bundeskunstsammlung, Bonn
Schaulager, Basel
Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Gent
An impressive list and far from complete is this list of Museums that have a work or works by Hanne Darboven in their collection. Hanne Darboven was one of the most extreme Conceptual Artist from the last century. Making works with text, letters and numbers…always written and notated by hand in sequences reminding of the sequential works by the Minimal Art artists, by whom she was influenced ( LeWitt and Judd).
The calendar sequence has consistently formed the basis for the majority of her installations, and the ‘daily arithmetic’ consisting of checksums came to replace the year’s calendrical progression according to a complex and challenging mathematical logic. Always written out by hand, her paperwork thus comprised rows and rows of ascending and descending numbers, u-shapes, grids, line-notations and boxes. Employing this neutral language of numbers and using pen, pencil, the typewriter, and graph paper as materials, she began to make simple linear constructions of numbers that she called Konstruktionen.
Whenever you encounter a Darboven, the detail is of less importance. It is the pure extreme large scale that impresses , which is the same reason that so little of her works are on permanent display. When you encounter one of Darboven’s works…. Take your time and experience the space and the walls, covered with her works from top to bottom and never forget it anymore.
The best book from the last years on the fascinating world of Conceptual Art is by far the book IN & OUT of AMSTERDAM/ Travels in Conceptual Art 1960-1976. A book which i cherish , because this is a treasure trove of ideas and excellent publications which can still be found on the market(s). The book si published by MoMa where in 2009 the exhibition was held with the same name. In &Out of Amsterdam shows the most important and possibly the best works by the following artists:
Bas Jan Ader
Stanley Brouwn ( see blog)
Hanne Darboven
Jan Dibbets
Ger van Elk
Gilbert & George
Sol LeWitt ( see blog)
Charlotte Posenenske
Allen Ruppersberg
Lawrence Weiner
All excellent artist and all published within the series of Bulletins published by Art & Project.
These publications have certainly become highly collectable items, because during the time they were published and now ( some 40 years ) few have survived. So start collecting them now while they are still available. see www.ftn-books.com
An unlikely combination, but…. they have something in common. Recently a new cotton bag with a special design by Sol LeWitt was published by the same publishers as the one who published the Cotton bags with the Chanel exhibition some 2 years ago. Same size and same quality and both cotton bags are available at www.ftn-books.com
I know for certain there are bag collectors and these original museum cotton bags are produced in such small numbers that they are highly collectable and only available for a very short time. So be quick in this first week of January and purchase the bag(s) for your collection.
I have always been a fan of Sol LeWitt and especially his exhibition posters i always like very much. Each of them a piece of art and whenever there is chance to buy them… i do so.
For instance there was a short city break some 10 years ago, when we did go to Barcelona. Flew with one of the greatest carriers of all time…Ryanair. When you ever have flown with Ryanair, you know of their strict policy to allow only 1 piece of hand luggage. maximum dimensions aprox .55 x 35 x 15 cm. not weighing more than 10 kg. When you pack for 4 days it always is a challenge to not exceed this weight, but so far we always have managed. This time, some 10 years ago, it was winter which is a slight complication, because all your clothing is much heavier and bulkier, but still we succeeded in packing under 10 kg. But….there was this very nice Fondacion Antoni Tapies museum in Barcelona and they sold a small poster by Sol and i had to buy some of them for my collection. Problem…. the cardboard tube did not fit in my cabin luggage suitcase, so i had to remove some of clothing to make space for it. This flight was exceptionally warm for me. 3 layers of clothing i had on my body, but the good thing is, I brought the poster home with me. Undamaged in mint condition and still a couple of them are for sale at www.ftn-books.com. The other 2 available posters come from one of my favorite museums in Germany. The Josef Albers Museum / Quadrat in Bottrop. Whenever you have a chance to visit both museum mentioned, give them a try a see their wonderful collections.
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
