Richard Serra
Walking is Measuring
Shawn Stipling (UK)
6am
2022
acrylic on canvas
75 x 70 cm
photo by Pete Hope
© 2022 Shawn Stipling, UK
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
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
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
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
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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
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
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)
