This morning i heard that one of the most influential designers from our time, Wim Crouwel, has died. The last years of his life he suffered Parkinson disease, but he was still going strong and must have looked forward to the retrospective of his works being opened later this month at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. What better way to commemorate this great artist than to show a selection of the many items designed by him. www.ftn-books.com
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And to finish one of my personal favorites. Wim Crouwel will be an example for many designers in the decades to come.
I still have not found why there is such a raise in interest in Pat Andrea from the US.
Last week i sold 2 of the best publications on this gifted dutch artist . Both to US collectors and galeries. They must know what they were doing , since these were not cheap publications, but the very best and rare books on Pat Andrea ever published. There was the Gemeentemuseum Catalogues with its main theme of Alice in Wonderland and ….The Schiedam catalogue of the 1994 retrospective on the artist. Arguably this is the better book of both, because paintings are depicted at a slightly bigger size and in many cases spread over 2 pages. Both highly collectable and better still….i have the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam catalogue available beside some other very nice and highly collectable Pat Andrea publications.
France has had its share of society painters and i f ever there was one who came after the flood of great names who build a career in making portraits of wealthy women, it must have been Domergue. He started his career in 1911 after he had finished his art studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Onwards he specialized in makeing portraits of Parisian women. Some people even say that this is how the French Pin Up was invented. His technique is something between impressionism and the style of Matisse.
His portraits are highly recognizable and the artistic appreciation and also the value of his works are starting to grow. This making him an artist for the future. The importance of Domergue is not only his figure studies , but also the works he has done as a fashion designer. The clothes he designed for Paul Poiret are considered as true classics. www.ftn-books.com has some nice vintage 60’s cataloges of the artist available.
Artist, photographer, wife… Behind the artist name Suzy Embo (BE, °1936) lies a privileged witness to the post-War Belgian avant-garde. Embo’s abstract images, camera-free experiments, graphic and high-contrast photographs connect her with the Subjektive Fotografie (Subjective Photography) of Otto Steinert, who used pure photographic techniques for the sake of personal expression.
In the 1960s, her work underwent a sea change: from “artiste photographe” to “photographe d’artistes”. Embo befriended Cobra artist Pierre Alechinsky, married the sculptor Reinhoud d’Haese and lived together with them in La Bosse, an artists’ commune northwest of Paris. Alongside her personal artistic work, she trained her lens on the international art scene (including such figures as Pierre Alechinsky, Christian Dotremont, Corneille, Hannoset, Karel Appel, Pol Bury, André Breton, Jacques Ledoux and Félix Labisse). The photographer created informal, intimate portraits, recorded artists at work, collaborated on projects and documented previews, plays, dance performances and other events.
Why again a blog on this photographer? 2 reasons. The first…. Suzy Embo got recognized as one of the great Belgian photographers after WWII with the large retrospective which ended last month in Belgium and secondly because www.ftn-books.com sells an original Suzy Embo photo of Louise Nevelson and i believe that this is one of the great Embo photgraphs that deserves to be known worldwide
Another favorite of Rudi Fuchs was Carol Rama, A Turin born artist.
An Italian self-taught artist whose unconventional painting encompassed an erotic, and often sexually aggressive universe populated by characters who present themes of sexual identity with specific references to female sensuality. Her work was relatively little known until curator Lea Vergine included several pieces in a 1980 exhibition, prompting Rama to revisit her earlier watercolour style. This is the time Fuchs noticed her qualities and presented her in 2 separate exhibitions in the Stedelijk Museum. The importance of Rama must not be undersestimated , because she had contact and knew artists like Warhol, Bunuel and Man Ray. NOt being influenced by them but inspired she developed a style and art of her own , for which she was rewarded isn 2005 with a large retropective exhibition in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in her birthplace of Turin. A great artist who is also present in the inventory of www.ftn-books.com.
Ettore Sottsass was one of the founding members of the Memphis group in 1981. He made some iconic designs for Alessi and Artemide and now is announced that a large retrospective will be held in the Stedelijk Museum in the April-October period in 2018 Prepare your self for this exhibition and look at the books available on Sottsass at www.ftn-books.com
Jean Tinguely ….one of my art heroes …. he had his first exhibitions in the Netherlands in the Stedelijk in the mid sixties and since, his works have been on show in many theme and group exhibitions, but never again in a large retrospective until now.
But now there is one in the Stedelijk Museum and this one is on show until the 5th of March 2017. What can i tell you about this one….it is a nice show, but…….it never has the impact one experiences when visiting the Tinguely Museum in Basel , because it lacks the space, grandeur, size and number of machines/works to show all aspects of his works. I really missed the extremely large mechanical works. I caught one on a video of his funeral
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and beside the one in the collection of the Stedelijk there is only one other one, a wall covered with a very large one, but that is all.
Not that the exhibition is not worth visiting…it really is …. but i was not knocked of my feet. Still i had a chance to make some nice photographs of the (DYLABY documents/ in a blog next week) documents on show and was amazed to see the correspondence Tinguely and Nikki de Saint Phalle had with Edy de Wilde ( the former director of the Stedelijk). On an A4 text, drawings, and illustrations were combined into great works of art.
This is an exhibition to visit for the smaller items like the documents and remember to visit the Tinguely Museum in Basel to get the best overview of his mechanical works.
See the ones in the Stedelijk as an entree to a dinner in which the side dishes steal the show.
There are a great number of Tinguely publications available at www.ftn-books.com
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
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