Sunday 11 August 2024

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





Tuesday 30 July 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



Saturday 13 July 2024

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




Friday 28 June 2024

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 



Friday 14 June 2024

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



Wednesday 29 May 2024

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






Monday 1 April 2024

Frank van Hemert / Van Gogh-Basquiat-Bacon

 

PSYCHIC PORTRAITS
When I paint a portrait, my only motivation is to understand the essence of that person and to tell his or her story in colour. Because colour is able to be more precise than words.


Frank van Hemert, 2024



Frank van Hemert

Vincent van Gogh

2023

oil on linen

165,5 x 134,5 cm

photo Gert Jan van Rooij


Vincent van Gogh





Frank van Hemert

Francis Bacon

2023

oil on linen

165,5 x 134,5 cm

photo Gert Jan van Rooij



Francis Bacon




Frank van Hemert

Jean-Michel Basquiat

2023

oil on linen

160 x 130 cm

photo Gert Jan van Rooij



Jean-Michel Basquiat

 

 

 

Frank van Hemert (NL)

www.frankvanhemert.com






Saturday 16 March 2024

Sabina Timmermans / Vincent van Gogh


Vincent van Gogh 

Garden of the Asylum

1889

oil on canvas

72 x 91cm

image: Van Gogh Museum





Vincent van Gogh 

Tree Roots

1890

oil on canvas

50,3 x 100,1 cm

image: Van Gogh Museum





Van Gogh’s final painting Tree Roots, served as the inspiration for a series of charcoal drawings I worked on for a year, called Caressing and Colliding - Sharing the Land.  The location where Van Gogh likely encountered these roots and trunks was discovered the year before my residency at the Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert in 2021. They were situated on a slope alongside a small street in Auvers-sur-Oise. According to a dendrologist, these roots and trunks were from coppiced trees, a form of forestry where new growth is repeatedly cut back for use. Some argue that Van Gogh expresses the struggle of life and death with this. 

 

My aim for the residency was to connect his final painting and the place of his death, with the place where Van Gogh's life began, Zundert. While exploring the forests around the Vlaamse Schuur where I stayed, I looked for similar shapes symbolizing the struggle for life and death. Initially, I searched for the coppiced trees I knew were there, but I became increasingly intrigued by the numerous surface tree roots from old beech trees. In my drawings, I envisioned them as bodies shaped by their life-long interaction and entanglement with their surroundings; with soil, wind, water, humans and other organisms. 

 

I gained a deeper understanding of how Van Gogh perceived nature, due to this residency. With new interest, I revisited his letters and his paintings depicting nature. I was captivated by how Van Gogh's trees transcend mere imagery, seeming to spring to life, imbued with a soul,  as if they are speaking to you. It’s only since then that I read in his paintings the profound connection Van Gogh felt with nature, how he felt at one with it. I strongly resonate with this sensation, and it serves as a significant inspiration for my own artistic practice.

 

Sabina Timmermans, 2024





Sabina Timmermans

Caressing and Colliding - Sharing the Land (12) 

2022

charcoal on paper

140 x 200 cm

image: Peter Cox




Sabina Timmermans (NL)

Roots (3)

2024

charcoal on paper

110 x 141,5 cm

sabinatimmermans.nl