Tag: pop art

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Claes Oldenburg (continued)

Renowned artist Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022) was born in Sweden and raised in the United States, where he pursued his artistic education. His art evolved in the 1960s, establishing him as one of the foremost figures of pop art. Initially inspired by Jean Dubuffet, Oldenburg created collages and assemblages using materials such as cardboard and burlap. He molded these materials into imitations of objects he found on the streets. In the spirit of pop art, his favored subjects were primarily everyday objects and food items. In 1961, he presented a store full of clothes and food made of plaster, available for purchase. His expressions were playful and surprising, yet critical, and were a part of the American version of pop art, which questioned the concept of art itself.

From 1962 onwards, his objects grew larger and often had a disorienting effect. Sometimes, this was due to the scale Oldenburg employed, and sometimes due to the deceptive suggestion of the material. For instance, he crafted a wooden replica of a saw and sculptures in the form of a power outlet using foam rubber and fabric. In this way, he emphasized the properties of these mundane objects by denying them.

In 1965, Oldenburg designed colossal monuments, consisting of greatly magnified mundane objects, placed in existing locations. He depicted these fantasies in collages and drawings, using dramatic perspective to evoke a sense of grandeur. Some of these ideas were brought to life in the 1970s and 1980s. The demands of creating objects for public spaces and the scale at which they were executed made durability a necessary consideration. The materials used may have changed, but the subjects remained banal. A trowel, a clothespin, a screw: these are everyday objects on a heroic scale and location.

www.ftn-books.com has some nice Oldenburg vcatalogs available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Eduardo Paolozzi (continued)

We are relocating!
In the coming weeks we will be occupied with packing and moving our internet store inventory. The entire collection needs to be transferred from Leidschendam to Oegstgeest, and this will take some time.
If all goes according to plan, we will be fully operational again on November 21st, but until then, it may happen that we are unable to immediately assist you with your order. We ask for your understanding, but as soon as possible, your order will be fulfilled with the utmost speed.

Eduardo Paolozzi, a remarkable figure in the world of Pop Art, was a sculptor and printmaker. His elaborate public projects, including the British Library courtyard and the London Underground, transformed spaces and captured the public’s attention.

Raised in Edinburgh by Italian parents, Paolozzi was greatly influenced by the American magazines he read, often collecting and pasting his favorite pictures into a scrapbook. This habit eventually became a defining technique in many of his iconic pieces. However, when Italy joined forces with Germany during World War II, Paolozzi, then a teenager, was labeled an enemy alien and interned. His father and grandfather were tragically killed when the ship they were on was attacked by a German U-boat.

After his release from internment, Paolozzi was conscripted into the army but managed to secure a discharge by feigning madness. He then pursued his passion for art, studying in both Edinburgh and London before moving to Paris in 1947. There, he met and was greatly inspired by renowned artists such as Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, and Alberto Giacometti. It was during this time that he created I Was A Rich Man’s Plaything, now widely considered to be one of the pioneering examples of Pop Art.

However, it wasn’t until 1952 that Paolozzi publicly displayed this work and over 40 other collages at the inaugural meeting of the Independent Group. Along with other influential artists, including photographer Nigel Henderson and sculptor Richard Hamilton, Paolozzi championed the use of found objects and popular culture in art. Their revolutionary ideas were brought to life in the groundbreaking 1956 exhibition, This is Tomorrow, held at the Whitechapel Gallery.

In the 1960s, Paolozzi continued to work prolifically, taking on teaching positions, experimenting with sculpture, and further developing his screenprinting skills. One of his most notable works from this time is As Is When, a series of prints inspired by the renowned philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. For his contributions to the arts, Paolozzi was bestowed with the title of CBE in 1968 and elected a Royal Academician in 1979.

www.ftn-books.com has several Paolozzi titles available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Richard Hamilton (1922-2011)

Hamilton was a native of London, receiving instruction from the Royal Academy Schools between the years of 1938 and 1940. He then proceeded to study engineering design at a Government Training Centre in 1940 before being employed as a designer for ‘jig and tool’ machinery. In 1946, he returned to the Royal Academy Schools, but was eventually expelled for his failure to grasp the teachings within the painting school (Hamilton, p.10). Despite this setback, he later attended the renowned Slade School of Art from 1948 to 1951.

In 1950, Gimpel Fils in London hosted an exhibition showcasing Hamilton’s engravings, inspired by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s bold 1913 piece, On Growth and Form. The latter had recently been republished in 1942, exerting a profound influence on Hamilton’s nascent work. As a testament to his creative aptitude, he also devised and curated notable exhibitions such as Growth and Form, presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951, and Man, Machine and Motion, held at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne and again at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1955. Subsequently, he exhibited at the prestigious Hanover Gallery in 1955, and contributed to the seminal event of This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, where he presented a striking collage piece entitled Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? for the event’s accompanying poster and catalogue. Alongside fellow visionary Victor Pasmore in 1957, he orchestrated an Exhibit at the Hatton Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Notably, Hamilton was a prominent figure of the Independent Group, an assembly of artists and writers founded in the 1950s at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Their symposiums played a pivotal role in shaping the burgeoning Pop art movement in Britain. Hamilton was also a steadfast proponent of critic Lawrence Alloway’s widely acclaimed thesis concerning the ‘fine/pop art continuum’. In his own interpretation, Hamilton viewed this concept as a means of establishing the principle of equality in art – proposing that there exists no hierarchical ranking of artistic value. To him, Elvis held the same standing as artists like Picasso, occupying two distinct ends of the artistic continuum. Furthermore, Hamilton strongly maintained that television deserved as much recognition and influence as the likes of New York Abstract Expressionism.

Hamilton served as an instructor at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, but ultimately retired from full-time teaching in 1966. He also made a typographic rendition of Duchamp’s Green Box, which was published in 1960. Working closely with Duchamp, Hamilton reconstructed The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (Tate Gallery T02011) in 1965-6. In the 1980s, Hamilton delved into incorporating technology into his artwork. He has had a successful career as a print-maker, and in 1983 he received the prestigious World Print Council Award. In 1991, Hamilton tied the knot with fellow artist Rita Donagh. Retrospective exhibitions of his work have been on display at the Hanover Gallery in 1964, the Tate Gallery in 1970 and 1992, and internationally. In fact, Hamilton represented Britain at the esteemed 1993 Venice Biennale.

www.ftn-books.com has several Richard Hamilton titles available. Among them the spectacular Stedelijk Museum catalog.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Evelyne Axell (1935-1972)

EVELYNE Axell is a rare European representative of the vibrant movement known as Pop Art. Hailing from a middle-class background, she received a catholic education from the esteemed Institut des dames de Marie. However, this would later fuel her lifelong disdain for Christian morality. In 1953, she honed her skills in ceramics at the Namur School of Art, before shifting her focus to drama school in Brussels. It was not until 1963 that she abandoned her acting career to fully immerse herself in the world of painting, finding inspiration in the works of renowned artist Magritte. Drawing influence from the buzzing art scene of 1960s New York, including iconic names such as Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, and Marisol, she delved into Pop Art and embraced experimentation with unconventional plastic materials. This edgy approach involved cutting and layering, creating captivating effects of depth and transparency. Axell’s art was undoubtedly shaped by the tumultuous political and social events of the era, such as the Vietnam War, the Black Panthers movement, and most significantly, the sexual liberation of women.

www.ftn-books.com has the Snoeck Ducaju book on Axell now available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Dorothy Iannone (1933-2022)

Iannone, born in Boston in the year 1933, was a literature graduate from Brandeis University. Her marriage to the wealthy investor and painter James Upham led to extensive travels across Europe and Asia from 1961 to 1967. As a fixture in the downtown art scene of New York, Iannone began creating cutout wooden portraits of prominent figures like Jacqueline Kennedy and Charlie Chaplin, which served as precursors to her later works.

In 1961, U.S. Customs confiscated Iannone’s copy of Henry Miller’s 1934 sexually explicit novel, Tropic of Cancer, at a New York airport. Her successful lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union resulted in lifting the 30-year ban on Miller’s work.

Around seven years later, Iannone met artist Dieter Roth while on a trip to Iceland. She left her husband at the time to move to Reykjavik with Roth, who she considered her muse. During the 1970s, she created some of her most famous works, often depicting scenes from her and Roth’s intimate life.

In 1969, Iannone’s work was censored by the director of Kunsthalle Bern for its inclusion of genitalia. In response, Roth withdrew his work from the show and curator Harald Szeemann resigned. Iannone then created the comic book “The Story of Bern (or) Showing Colors,” reflecting on the experience.

Both Iannone and Roth became prominent figures in the Fluxus movement. They remained lovers until 1974 and close friends until Roth’s passing in 1998. In 1976, Iannone received a scholarship to move to Berlin, where she resided until her death.

Despite the art world taking time to catch up, Iannone’s controversial work was critically reassessed in the early 21st century. Her video sculpture “I Was Thinking of You” (1975), a human-sized box painted with an erotic scene and featuring a monitor screening a video of the artist masturbating, was recreated at the Wrong Gallery at Tate Modern in 2005 and for the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

www.ftn-books.com has several titles on Iannone and Roth available.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Dieter Asmus (1939)

Schermafbeelding 2021-09-10 om 13.38.12

I first noticed Asmus when i was researching Dieter Hiessere , another German Pop Art artist. Dieter Asmus started his career in 1964-1965 when his early realistic paintings were demonstrated to the public for the first time. At the same period, along with his fellows, German painters Peter Nagel, Dietmar Ullrich and Nikolaus Störtenbecker, he founded in 1965 the artistic group dubbed Zebra. Its main goal was to gather all German realist artists.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Asmus got acquainted with an art historian Armin Schreiber whose wife was Brigitte Kronauer, a writer. Three friends established a publishing company which issued the debut Kronauer’s novel illustrated by Asmus.

Since that period, Dieter Asmus exhibited at various prestigious galleries in London, Rome, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Paris.

Now the artist lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. He creates his artworks in oil using such photography technics as snapshot, color balance and clipping.Dieter Asmus is a prolific artist, one of the key figures in contemporary figurative art whose artistic talent and imagination were marked by many awards and scholarships.So, in 1967, at the beginning of his artistic journey, Asmus became a recipient of three scholarships, those from German Academic Scholarship Foundation, French government and from the German Academic Exchange Service which allowed the artist to go to London. These ones were followed in 1971 by the art scholarship from the Federal Association of German Industries (BDI). Nowadays, Asmus’s artworks are acquired by such prestigious museums and galleries as The Albertina in Vienna, Austria, the National Gallery of Berlin, Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Hamburger Kunsthalle and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

www.ftn-books.com has one Asmus title available ( www.ftn-books.com)

asmus

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Stuart Davis(1894-1964)

Schermafbeelding 2019-04-10 om 16.51.44

Not many Europeans are familiar with the works by Stuart Davis. Davis is for the Americans the equivalent of what matisse is for the Europeans. Of course Matisse is far more known than Davis ever will become, but study his works closely and you can similarities between the appraoch of the composition and the elements within the composition. Sandberg was an admirer so was Gielijn Escher

left Davis/ right Gielijn Escher

 

Rudi Fuchs wrote an excellent text on Stuart Davis in the Stedelijk Museum Bulletin from 1998 . The publication is available at www.ftn-books.com. It explains why Davis works are lesser known , but for me the conclusion was …please give me more. These works are fascinating and a joy to look at.

stuart davis b

The article below comes from Wikipedia:

Stuart Davis, (born December 7, 1894, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died June 24, 1964, New York, New York), American abstract artist whose idiosyncratic Cubist paintings of urban landscapes presaged the use of commercial art and advertising by Pop artists of the 1960s.

Davis grew up in an artistic environment. His father was a graphic artist and art editor of a Philadelphia newspaper, where he worked with William J. Glackens, George Luks, John Sloan, and Everett Shinn, all later famous as members of the Ashcan school of American painting. His parents encouraged his interest in art, and at age 16 he quit high school to study painting in New York City under Robert Henri, leader of the group known as The Eight (later absorbed into the Ashcan school), whose teaching emphasized the importance of taking subject matter from urban life.

By 1913 Davis was competent enough to show five watercolours in the Armory Show. This was the first large exhibit in the United States of avant-garde European art, and the event marked a turning point in his career. Over the next few years he strove to achieve the compositional order, nonimitative colour, and shallow picture space characteristic of the new European painting. He began to experiment with collage (a recently invented technique of making compositions from bits of paper and objects glued to a surface) and sometimes varied the usual process by making paintings of his collages, as in Lucky Strike (1921), finally arriving at a completely nonillusionistic style, which culminated in his Egg Beater series of 1927–30.

In 1928 Davis traveled to France, where he spent a year painting relatively realistic street scenes in Paris. Back in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s, he developed a new style based on the rhythmic contrast between geometric areas of flat colour and objects clearly defined in linear perspective. During these years, Davis was an outspoken opponent of fascism and, in 1938, became the national chairman of the American Artists’ Congress.

After the mid-1940s, Davis produced many of his most important works, such as The Mellow Pad(1945–51) and Little Giant Still Life (1950). These meticulously planned and executed paintings possess a wit and gaiety in contrast to Abstract Expressionism, the then-dominant style of art. Davis was inspired by taxis, storefronts, and neon signs. The dissonant colours and lively, repetitive rhythms in his work can be seen as visual analogs to jazz music, which he loved.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Victor Vasarely another special edition added

Schermafbeelding 2018-10-11 om 16.37.02

I have had a weakness for the art of Victor Vasarely. It must have been one of my first encounters with Modern Art in the Mid Sixties. In the window of an art dealer in de Hoogstraat in Den Haag there were on display signed serigraphs by Vasarely and since OP Art and Pop Art were popular  i took an interest in these Vasarely too. I could not afford them, but found some 20 years later that Vasarely published highly affordable book publications which had the same quality as his prints. I have been collecting and adding Vasarely books and special publications to my collections ever since and yesterday i added another special publication. It is the 1961 Hanover gallery Vasarely catalogue. Not too many pages ( 32) , but what makes this special is the extra silkscreened inlay which can be combinedx together with the first print within the catalogue. My guess is not many of this rare cataloguue will have survived and what makes it even more special is the pristine condition of both silkscreened print and bookpage. Here are the photographs of this special and highly collectible Vasarely catalogue which is now available at www.ftn-books.com

vasarely bondstreet f

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Jim Dine (1935)

He is for certain one of the greatest Pop Art artists if ever there was one. One from the first generation of Pop Art artists who rose to fame in the early 60’s and who even had some great exhibitions in the years to follow at the Stedelijk Museum and the Boymans van Beuningen museum in the Netherlands in the 60’s and 70’s. Both museum have since some great paintings in their collections , (left Stedelijk / right Boymans van Beuningen)

but the Stedelijk Museum stands out for me , because beside multiple art works in their collection they published one of the first simple orange/red catalogues designed by Wim Crouwel. This one devoted specially to the drawings of Jim Dine and available at www.ftn-books.com and this is Wim Crouwel classic

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

But of course there are other Jim DIne titles also available at www.ftn-books.com

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Konrad Klapheck (1935)

Schermafbeelding 2018-09-03 om 15.12.57

It is still not clear to me if i should call the art by Konrad Klapheck the german equivalent of Pop Art or German realism. …Just tell me what you think yourself?

Fact is that his art is highly recognizable and emerged in an era where ordinary items like typewriters and teakettles were blown up, abstracted and enhanced and painted on canvas. The art of Konrad Klapheck could be described as a typical “east german” kind of art the use of green and brown are very present in his paintings, but where this comes from is not clear, because he was born , raised and even studied in Dusseldorf. But his use of these specific colors makes this not the happy kind of Pop Art like the Pop Art of the Americans or the French, but a restrained kind of Pop Art. His subsequent paintings, often large in scale, are precise and seemingly realistic depictions of technical equipment, machinery and everyday objects, but strangely alienated; they are “monumental, amusingly absurd and sexually suggestive”.

Klapheck’s subjects through the years have included (in order of introduction) typewriters, sewing machines, water taps and showers, telephones, irons, shoes, keys, saws, car tires, bicycle bells and clocks. Influenced by Duchamp, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, Klapheck’s “ironic treatment of everyday mechanics” prefigures Pop art in its magnification of the trivial. www.ftn-books.com has some Klapheck titles available

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA