Tag: soto

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Jesus Rafael Soto (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.

Born in Venezuela, Jesús Rafael Soto was a renowned sculptor and painter whose career began as a helper in painting movie advertisements. He later received formal training at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Artes Aplicadas in Caracas, alongside contemporaries Carlos Cruz-Diez and Alejandro Otero. He also spent three years teaching at a small art academy in Venezuela.

Soto gained recognition for his contributions to the development of op-art and kinetic art – forms of art that incorporate movement. In 1950, he moved to Paris, where he became acquainted with the Atelier d’Art Abstrait through fellow artists and exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. A year later, he visited the Netherlands with a group of friends and was inspired by the works of Piet Mondrian at the Kröller-Müller Museum and Stedelijk Museum.

It was in Paris that Soto’s career as a kinetic artist took off. His open, interactive sculptures and installations, often consisting of thin hanging tubes that viewers can walk through, constantly transform and challenge the concept of reality as a collection of individual objects.

From 1970 to the early 1990s, Soto’s works were featured in prestigious museums in Paris, New York, and Amsterdam. In 1973, a museum solely dedicated to his works was opened in his hometown of Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela.

Jesús Rafael Soto passed away in Paris in 2005, leaving behind a legacy of artwork that continues to captivate and inspire.

wwww.ftn-books.com has the catalog from the Stedelijk Museum with the Kinetic cover now available.

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Gianni Colombo (1933-1993)

 

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His art is financially far out of reach for me personally, but i really love his art. It has a mystical quality and it is the kind of kinetic art i really admire. Together Jesus Rafael Soto and Walter Leblanc he is one of the 3 artists i admire most from the era. His kinetic art has become a classic . Not the easiest kind of art to exhibit, but when it is done properly you will see the strength of his art.

I had the pleasure to visit the Colombo exhibition in castello di Rivoli ( near Torino) in 2009.  in which his work was brought together and it showed itself in the best possible setting.

Here is a short biography:

He is one of the most important artist in Italy in experiencing kinetic and a member of the Arte Programmata moviment.

Between ’59 and ’60 he founds the “T Group”, linked to the international movement of “Nouvelle Tendence”. He  held his firt solo show at the Galleria Pater (Milan, 1960).

He experiences in different fields of physics which include electrical and magnet devices, industrial neon lights and laser, all to exalt the aesthetic potential of technological rationalism.  In the 1960s he made experimental films, kinetic object and enviroments. He has exhibited on numerous occasions in Italy and abroad.

In 1985 he becomes director of the Brera Academy where he teaches the “structuration of space”. He also takes part in avant-garde scenography (Operstheater of Frankfurt, 1986) and in designing virtual architectures (the “Architetture cacogoniometriche” in 1988, the “Spazi curvi”, 1992).

With his art-work was the winner of the Venice Biennial in 1968.

www.ftn-books.com has the following books on Gianni Colombo available

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Vassilakis Takis (1925)

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Day 4 of my “forgotten artists” blogs is devoted to Vassilakis Takis. Now 92 years of age, but forgotten by most. It used to be different because in the 60’s his name was quite known among art lovers , specially the one interested in Kinetic art. His Grec origins never showed in his works , no classical sculptures for him, but investigating the relations between art and science, resulting in Kinetic works which were original. Still he never became the household name as others from his generation have become. No Soto, Staudt or Agam stature for Takis, but he had his moments in art, which resulted in some nice and very hard to find catalogues. 2 of them available at www.ftnbooks.com. Since the early 1950s, he has been exploring these new aesthetic territories, creating three-dimensional works of art that incorporate invisible energies as a fourth, active element. Takis, who describes himself as an “instinctive scientist,” employs powerful, elemental forces to generate the forms, movements, and musical sounds of both his static and kinetic works but never became famous for his kinetic art and that is a pity, because his approach is original, which resulted in somne nice works of which some of them are in some pubic collections ( mainly in France).

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Wim Crouwel and Willem Sandberg publications found.

3 maal incl arp a

I am always on the look out and searching for the best catalogues that are published by rhe Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The best catalogues were published in the 50’s and 60’s and designed by Willem Sandberg and Wim Crouwel and i am proud to say that i have managed to colelct a wonderful collection of their catalogues and possibly one of the largest collections available on the internet. Many of thier publications are sold and collected all over the world and because of that i sell these catalogues to many collectors. The 3 titles i present in this blog weere sold out during the last 6 months, but….. i was lucky to find these with a colleague and now i have them again in my inventory. Just search for them at www.ftn-books.com .

3 maal incl arp c

They are expensive catalogues , but take my word these will become impossible to find in a few years and when they come on the market they will be even more expensive. The power of these titles is that they are more like works of art. The Arp (1960) has woodcut printing on the outside and inside and the Soto cover is a kinetic object because of the thread on the outside (1969). The Steinberg….yes one of the first publications with fold out pages (1953).

3 maal incl arp b

 

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SOTO and galerie Denise Rene

One of my favorite galleries of all time is the galerie Denise Rene in Paris and not only because the artists they represent are the ones i like most, but also because of their publications which in many cases contain something extra. Like this SOTO catalogue from 1970 which i acquired last week. The blue, silver and yellow squares within the catalogue are all executed in silkscreen prints and which combinations forms an abstract composition within the catalogue, which makes this catalogue some kind of an artist book and not an ordinary catalogue. This catalogue is now available at www.ftn-books.com. As for the other Denise Rene catalogues search for Denise Rene and find some other great catalogues by this famous gallery in Paris.

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Jakob Bill….son of Max Bill

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The title sounds like a sequel to a popular horror movie, but it isn’t.

Somehow i have developed a liking for Swiss contemporary KONKRETE artists. Almost all are constructivists and Richard Paul Lohse and Jakob Bill are two of them. This time i will blog on Jakob Bill the son of the famous Max Bill and belonging to the group of Zurich Konkrete Kunst.

Outside Switzerland and Germany , Bill is not very well known, but when you visit the collections in Switzerland you encounter many works by Bill. The Zurich Museum/ Haus Konstruktiv organized some exhibitions with Bill, but his most important major exhibitions were all in Swiss Museums . Except for one…..Organized by one of the best galleries in the world. Galerie Denise Rene organized an exhibition in 1972. Denise Rene was the perfect gallery for an artist like Bill, they already represented great artist like Vasarely, Arp., Agam and Jesus Rafael Soto. Bill fits in perfectly. Perhaps this exhibition was a step forward for the popularity of the works by Jakob Bill, but still the artist is not very well known outside Switzerland and certainly deserves better.

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Jesus Rafael Soto and the Josef Albers Museum

A few years ago we went to the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop. An excellent museum with a small museum shop. Small but with a very interesting inventory. The shop sells catalogues and prints from over 20 years of Josef Albers Museum exhibitions and some of them are rare and collectable. Beside the books they have a publishing program of A0 posters for each of the exhibitions they organize. Inside these editions they have the artist sign about 10 copies and sell these separately at a higher price plus……….they publish their own special editions.

On my first visit i bought a very nice silkscreened poster by Jesus Rafael Soto, signed and one of the 3 available. Half a year ago we went again for a visit and i had hopes for 2 more of these beauties , but too late…they had sold out. However i was lucky, because the special edition of the Soto print , signed and numbered by Soto was still available. Unfortunately at a much higher price than anticipated, but  still too good to be true, so i bought it. It now is for sale at www.ftn-books.com  (inquire for more pictures).

The Soto is one of those prints that will be in high demand in the next 10 years, but beside this Soto, there are many more extremely nice posters published by the Josef Albers Museum. If you live outside Germany they can not/ will not sell you because they only sell within Germany, but there is a selection of these posters/prints available in my shop , because i chose some for my stock. Search for Quadrat / Bottrop or Josef Albers Museum and you will find about 35 of them for sale……and the signed SOTO sccreenprint.

 

wilfried

www.ftn-books.com