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Bernard Buffet ( continued)

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Readers will notice this second blog on Bernard Buffet. Buffet was a well known painter in the late Fifties and Early Sixties, but became out of fashion by the end of that decade. But lately there is a new interest in this painter and i can explain why. HIs gallery , galerie Garnier stayed with him during his career and never lost faith and secondly…..his way of painting in series was a way of producing a large number of paintings and i must say not all are of interest and have enough quality to convince, but there is one quality they have in common. These paintings have a style of their own. The Buffet style is there and it really is a style Buffet developed by himself. This makes these paintings stand out and the truly great ones are paintings one must admire. Perhaps Buffet is not the artist who has rose to absolute fame lije Picasso or Pollock. But his art is still there and with this art Buffet is a name which deserves a place in art history. www.ftn-books.com has added some galerie Garnier exhibtion catalogues and has collected a nice series of exhibition catalogues by Garnier which are still available.

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Frank van Hemert (continued)…..ZEVEN

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Frank van Hemert works in series. Paintings and drawings can have the same title and be totally different from each other in size and composition. However there is one element which is fixed. In the  ZEVEN ( Seven) series its is the sequential numbering of 1,2,3,4,5,6

The Seven is not used, but the ZEVEN title completes this series of numbers. To van Hemert, the number seven is a symbol for the person who has “fulfilled” himself, become a whole person. The fact that the number itself is not included in the image indicated that this stage has not yet been attained; This “not yet” is suggested by the incomplete number sequence.

Because many of these paintings have been painted with the pink/red that has to been proven instable. Many of these paintings have been damaged or at least can not been shown  and stored properly.

This SEVEN series has become of the most iconic and important series by Frank van Hemert and fact is that from these series part of the paintings can be considered to be lost because of the paint van Hemert used. Still some are in excellent condition and  i have been fortunate to buy one of these large paintings which is in excellent condition. It comes the former Buhrmann Ubbens collection and has been preserved in an excellent way and has become now one of the highlights from our collection.

I have tried to find some from examples from the series of ZEVEN paintings and of course i will start with the one from our collection…our own ….ZEVEN

and in the end there are some publications on Frank van Hemert that www.ftn-books.com has available.

zeven hemert

 

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Carlo de Roover (1900-1986)

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de Roover is a Belgian artist who moves in his works between realism and abstraction. At one time one encounters a nice nude painting and a few months later  one finds from almost the same year, an abstract painting. For me personally i think his abstract paintings are far more convincing than his realistic ones. It does not mean that his realistic paintings are not good, but i find them  to be “13 in a dozen” and not that attractive. However his abtract art is different and some of his paintings are nice enough to collect.

Carlo de Roover is hardly known outside Belgium , so if yiou are interested in this artit it is best to focus on Belgina collections and auctions. One exception…. http://www.ftn-books.com has the 1979 ICC catalogue now available.

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Giovanni Nicolai, (continued)

Another painting by Giovanni Nicolai which picture was send 2 months ago. I received this and i was even a liitle scared by the subject. Nicolai wrote to me that it was inspired by Symbolist and nude art and he tried to incorparate this in this painting. I think he succeeded and i will continue to follow this italian artist with great interest. for more information on Giovanni Nicolia please refer to wilfriedvandenelshout@gmail.com

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Eugenio Carmi (1920-2016)

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Without realizing it i have collected some nice collectable items by Eugenio Carmi which are all available at http://www.ftn-books.com

Carmi was one of the first Modern Abstract painters in Italy. By chance i collected some works, but finding info on him was musch harder so here is the text i found on Wikipedia.

He is considered to have been one of the main exponents of abstractionism in Italy.

Born in Genoa, in 1938 Carmi moved to Switzerland because of the racial laws imposed by Benito Mussolini. He graduated in Chemistry at the ETH Zurich. Carmi returned to Italy after the war, where he studied painting with Felice Casorati and sculpture with Guido Galletti.

In the early 1950s, Carmi abandoned the informal style and adopted a geometric rigor in his works.His works often used factory materials such as welded steel and iron.[1]

Between 1958 and 1965 Carmi collaborated with the steel company Italsider (later Ilva) as their responsible for the image.In 1963 he founded with Flavio Costantini and Emanuele Luzzati the cooperative of artists Galleria del Deposito. A close friend of Umberto Eco, he collaborated with him on several projects.] He also taught in several academies

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Barend Blankert (1941)

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Some will say and compare him as being a dutch Lucian Freud, but Barend Blankert is for me still Barend Blankert and personally i would not compare him with anybody else.

Every time i encounter a painting by Blankert and study it i make up my own story. The scene and composition are the inspiration and the result always an original story and probabaly not the story Blankert intended.

So beside the impressive painting technique in which Blankert excels his storytelling is another quality this artist has. It is well worth studying this artist and whenever there is a possibility to see his paintings, do not hesitate and go there to admire these.

www.ftn-books.com has some Blankert publicatons available.

blankert

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Franco Gentilini(1909-1981)

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Another artist who was represented by Galleria del Cavallino was the italian painter and ceramic artist Franco Gentilini.. He had several shows during his career at the galleria del Cavallino. (the 1960 publication for the Cavallino gallery is available at www.ftn-books.com). Perhaps his fame was partly thanks to being a collaborator to Giorgio Morandi, with whom he had made several objects  in Bologna. He took part in numerous editions of the Venice Biennale, beginning with the acceptance of his work for the 17th Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia in 1930, when he also visited Paris.

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He moved to Rome in 1932 and held his first solo show at the Galleria di Roma with works in an archaic style inspired by pre-Renaissance Italian art. He also established himself as a fresco painter. He took part in the 5th Esposizione Internazionale delle Arti Decorative in Milan in 1933 and the 2nd Quadriennale Nazionale d’Arte in Rome in 1935, on which occasion the city’s governing body bought one of his works. It was in the late 1930s that he began to associate with the artists of the Roman School. There was considerable demand for his work among private Italian collectors after World War II, not least because of his participation in numerous exhibitions.

 

 

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Romano Frea (1945)

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An artist who had no connection in the Netherlands was known by Will Hoogstraate from gallery d’Eendt , but according to my information had no exhibitions at this gallery, but……. just look at the similarities with Will Leewens . Here is a work by Will Leewens (on the right) from roughly the same period. (Frea on the left)

Artist who worked over 1500 km apart from each other and were progressing and developing their works into the same world of abstraction. I still find this fascinating to discover and see that artists , working apart from eachother and probably not knowing the other person, are developing their art into the same direction.

I recently added two scarce Frea publications to my inventory. Both are still available at www.ftn-books.com

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Paule Vézelay (1892-1984)

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Paule Vezelay was  recognized for her art in the last stage of her career and is not that knoewn an artist. Still the TATE organized a retrospective in 1983 . Not many publications have been published during her life, but some small publications are still to be found on the internet. One is availabel at http://www.ftn-books.com.

the following text comes from Wikipedia:

Vézelay was born Marjorie Watson-Williams in Bristol, a daughter of the pioneering ENT surgeon, Patrick Watson-Williams (1863-1938). Before the First World War she trained for a short period at the Slade School of Fine Art and then at the London School of Art. She first gained recognition as a figurative painter, had her first London show in 1921 and was invited to join the London Group in 1922. She moved to France in 1926 and changed her name to Paule Vézelay possibly to identify herself with the School of Paris. In 1928 she abandoned figurative painting and made her first abstract work (which is now lost) and from then on worked exclusively in an abstract mode. In 1929 she met André Masson whom she fell in love and lived with for four years. Working side by side, they both painted dreamlike surrealist works.[2] Vezelay became well respected in modernist Parisian art circles and was elected in the 1930s to membership of the French abstract movement, Abstraction-Création, which was largely established as a reaction to Surrealism.

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On the outbreak of the Second World War Vézelay moved back to London, but had difficulty in gaining recognition from the British art establishment, possibly because of her identification with Paris at a time when the London art world was beginning to acquire its own separate and different reputation. However, in 1952 she was invited by Andre Bloc, president of the Parisian constructivist abstract movement Groupe Espace, to form a London branch of that movement. After many difficulties and the refusal of some leading British abstract artists to join (including Victor Pasmore), she was successful in forming a small group of painters, sculptors and architects who held an exhibition in the Royal Festival Hall in 1955 which anticipated many elements of the much better known 1956 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition, This is Tomorrow. In the 1950s she made textile designs for Metz of Amsterdam and Heals of London. In many of her works, Vézelay’s abstract imagery, such as floating quasi-biomorphic shapes, was outside the main characteristics of the constructivist approach. She had a lifelong aim of creating works which were “pleasing and happy” – not terms generally associated with Constructivism. However, her view that ‘pure’ abstract art enhanced the environment, and her involvement with Groupe Espace in the 1950s which promoted the concept of a synthesis (or close collaboration) between architects and abstract painters and sculptors, place her at least in part within the Constructivist tradition. Her post-war textile designs for Heals also place her firmly within the 20th century Modern Movement.

The Tate gave Vézelay a retrospective exhibition in 1983 – a late recognition of the quality of her work and her significant place in art history as one of the first British artists to embark on a lifetime exploration and development of abstraction.

Paule Vézelay was also included in Pallant House Radical Women exhibition, focusing on the works of Jessica Dismorr and her contemporaries, in early 2020.

paule vezelay

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Scott Kilgour (1960)

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Why this blog on Scott Kilgour?  Two reasons….1st i have added a brilliant ” (red) PUTTI” from 1990 by this artist to my art inventory and 2nd because i think he deserves to be mentioned and i am not alone . The famous Henry Geldzahler wrote the following in 1990

Scott Kilgour’s personality is cool, at a slight distance, but never cruel or ironic. The world he experiences and transmits is idealized without being dewey-eyed. Born and educated in Glasgow, he has known enough of sharp adversity to last him a lifetime. Twenty-three years old when he moved to New York in 1983, Scott found his balance rather quickly, voraciously swallowing museums and art galleries, surveying the scene and seeking his point of entry, his own stance. His bouquet of favorites included several surprises, Hans Hoffman and Willem De Kooning among them, artists whose excellence he recognized without needing their particular esthetics in his own work.

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What Scott did discover and make use of immediately on his arrival was George Ballanchine’s great neoclassical institution the New York City Ballet, at its peak in the early and middle eighties, its repertoire as broad and sharply characterized as any performing arts company in this century. It was there, several nights a week, that he refined his sense of composition and his daughtsmanship, that absolute balance of ground and line that is Scott’s benefaction. And it is to Picasso’s transcendental neo-classical harlequins and dancers of 1922 and 1923 that Scott Kilgour’s sense of wholeness and absolute balance refers to memorably, so movingly.

Henry Geldzahler
May 1990, Southampton

the RED PUTTI from 1990 is now for sale at http://www.ftnbooks.com

please inquire at : wilfriedvandenelshout@gmail.com

Other works by Kilgour are on offer at :

Scott Kilgour

and

http://www.michelemackfineart.com/kilgour.html