Jordie Rovers / Edgar Degas

 

Edgar Degas 

Portrait of Henri Michel-Lévy

1878

oil on canvas

40 × 28 cm

Edgar Degas

Laundresses Carrying linen in town

1878

oil on paper

46 x 61 cm

From the model drawing classes at the academy in The Hague, I often work with soft pastel crayons. Through this path, I came across fascinating works by Edgar Degas. The layered use of color, the striking perspectives and the imagination in rough touches of his paintings will always stay with me. 

 

Jordie Rovers, 2024

Jordie Rovers

exhibition in PARK-Platform for Visual Arts, Tilburg NL, 2024

Jordie Rovers

Patacon 

2024

195 x 175 cm

oilsticks on canvas

Jordie Rovers (NL)

Bakje

2024

160 x 130 cm

oil on linen

cargocollective.com/jordierovers

Jolanda van Gennip / Piet Mondriaan - Hilma af Klint

Jolanda van Gennip

Mondriaan baby 

1993

oil and make-up on canvas 

70 x 63 cm 

 

 

In 1993, I painted ‘Mondriaan baby’. An ode to Piet Mondriaan. The fondness/fascination is deep, for his power, his sensitive brushstroke. I look at his works preferably very close to the skin, they touch me deeply and I want to keep looking and disappear into them.

I saw the works of Hilma af Klint for the first time in 2010 in Museum Arnhem and I didn't know what hit me. I had never seen anything like them before. Large abstract works with a spiritual message. Deeply impressed, the work never left me.

Because of their shared interest in the spiritual, these two artists, contemporaries of each other, were brought together in the exhibition ‘Levensvormen’ at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, from October 2023 to February 2024. 

 - Jolanda van Gennip, 2024

 

 

'The feeling of being part of something much bigger than ourselves, whether we call it the universal, the spiritual, nature, the cosmos, or simply reality. Their oeuvres put us in touch with that unknowable whole of which we are undeniably a part.'

 - from Life Forms (p. 91), Laura Stamps, curator of modern art, Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Piet Mondriaan

Zee (Pier and Ocean)

1914 

charcoal on paper

51 x 63 cm 

collection Kunstmuseum Den Haag

 

All true art comes from universal source. It comes into being intuitively. The very essence of art is the visual expression of -also impossible to describe- life in all its fullness and richness.

 - Piet Mondriaan

Hilma af Klint

The Ten Largest no.4 (Adolescence) 

1907 

tempera on paper on canvas

328 x 240 cm

 

Those who have the gift of deeper vision can see beyond form and concentrate on the wondrous thing hiding behind every form, which is called life.

 - Hilma af Klint

Jolanda van Gennip (NL)

Untitled

2020

oil on canvas

80 x 95 cm

photo Peter Cox

instagram.com/jolandavangennip_painter

 

After 'Mondriaan baby', now a whole oeuvre further, I went the way of the matter, colour and paint, and always looking to transcend that same matter into something I don't yet know, you could call it spiritualisation, the unknown.

 - Jolanda van Gennip, 2024

Tanja Mosblech / Giorgio Morandi

 

Giorgio Morandi

Landscape (Levico)

1957

watercolour

16 x 21,5 cm

 

 

The harmonious, exciting combination of form and colour is the challenge Morandi sets himself with each new work. It is both a figurative and a non-figurative picture. Gravity, otherwise associated with colour, is suspended.

In the present case, the watercolour, applied fluidly to the paper without any preliminary drawing, is characterised by a highly formal - almost abstract - condensation of the motif.

 

Tanja Mosblech, 2024

Tanja Mosblech (DE/BE)

Garden

2020

oil on canvas

93 x 124 cm

www.tanjamosblech.net

Maartje Frenken / Odilon Redon

 

Odilon Redon

Composition: Fleurs 

ca 1900-1905 

oil on panel

53,5 × 49,6 cm

collection Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede

 

 

The connection with the beautiful, all-encompassing nature, the light, the flowers and plants is what extremely fascinates me.

I stand in the light and look closely at the plants and flowers, I crouch and see in the backlight the white, pink and yellow flowers. The flowers speak for themselves in all their universal fragility. 

My work is dreamy, playful and concerned with all that blooms and grows and eventually withers and perishes. I capture that with oil paint in muted colours, fluid and transparent, delicate and tenuous. Thinly painted, if not sparse in material use. The skin of the canvas vaguely shines through. I am a sensitive colourist (like the symbolist Odilon Redon was, with whom my work has associations). I like to speak through my paintings about emotions and concentration on what is really of value.

 

Maartje Frenken, 2024

Maartje Frenken

De rode draad 

oil on canvas

120 x 80 cm

Maartje Frenken (NL)

You're not alone 

oil on canvas

130 x 90 cm

www.maartjefrenken.nl

Daniela Baumann / Alfred Hrdlicka

 

Alfred Hrdlicka   

Orpheus 1  

2008 

bronze  

Vienna

 

 

Alfred Hrdlicka was an impressive sculptor and graphic artist. His consistent imagery, the power and energy with which he created the figure in stone or on paper had a great impact on me when I was young. His uncompromisingly energetic and unadorned sculptures, drawings and graphics were a kind of guide at the time and left their mark on me.

Daniela Baumann, 2024

Daniela Baumann (DE)

Earthbound   

2024     

charcoal on paper 

280 x 300 cm     

photo Peter Hinschlaeger

www.baumanndaniela.de 

Karin van Pinxteren / Juan Muñoz

 

Juan Muñoz

Listening Figure

1991

patinated bronze

135 x 74 x 73 cm

image: Van Abbemuseum

 

 

They walk with you, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for years, inserting in, inserting out, joining, disappearing, communicating with something that you are open to at that moment.

Juan Muñoz joins me again; he is an old acquaintance. His hushed but breathing work ‘Two Figures and Two Trees’ made a deep impression at Park Middelheim in Antwerp 1993. After the recognition, unknown to me at the time, he stuck around for ten years, before quietly leaving, even literally. Now he reappears.

I know nothing about Muñoz, we stroll in images, not words. The book I bought thirty years ago is a Spanish edition, his motivations are unknown to me. I don't seem to need to read anything about it, which surprises me now because it is an unexpected observation: all these years I’ve only been watching.

The title of the publication is ‘mónologos y dialogos’. The translation may be obvious and with it the reason why the work appeals to me.

It strikes me that I can make out many Muñoz / van Pinxteren duos, this too is an unexpected observation - and an ode to intuition, which I was not aware of before this question was put to me.

Karin van Pinxteren, 2024

Karin van Pinxteren (NL)

Trust

2012-2018

wood, text, cardboard, lacquer

62 x 35 x 3 cm

photo: Peter Cox
karinvanpinxteren.com

Niko de Wit / Carel Visser

 

Carel Visser

Gevouwen toren

1972

sheet steel

75 x 100 x 100 cm

 

 

When observing Carel Visser's sculptures, you can often experience how his sculptures are constructed. A closer look reveals how you can become part of the folding of plates to then stack them. The four folded plates each have their own character and dimension derived from their place, size and weight in relation to each other. The elements have a great cohesion within a surprisingly clear composition. In this sculpture you can recognize Visser's fascination with the Mexican pyramids.

My sculpture consists of five massive blocks stacked along two sides. The stacking of the blocks stands in a dangerous balance. A sixth block would collapse the stack. Defying gravity is an important motif for me when creating my sculptures.

For the development of my work, Carel Visser's oeuvre has proven to be very inspiring. 

 

Niko de Wit, 2024

Niko de Wit (NL)

Stapeling omlaag

1975-1976

cast iron

31,5 x 17 x 11,8 cm

nikodewit.nl