Arno Kramer / Michelangelo

Michelangelo
Study for Saint Laurence

1534-1536

black chalk on paper

24,2 x 18,2 cm

Teylers Museum, Haarlem NL

When there ever has been one artist who has shown me that you can make a drawing in its hesitation and search for the ultimate unconscious to a unique piece of art, it is Michelangelo. What a happiness that most of his drawings have been meant as sketches for other work, like paintings and sculptures. It is an interesting question if we do not look now for autonomous quality with a today’s view. But what does it matter. From nearly every drawing I can learn something. It has to do with the fact that all his drawings have a certain openness, searching for the right things, the ideal forms, the human being in all its vulnerability. In details you see the phenomenal vision and technique glittering. From all sides sparks passion. Following small mistakes in for example the corrections of drawing an arm in three states, makes the drawing even more lively.

Arno Kramer, August 28 2013

Arno Kramer (NL)

Untitled

2013

pencil on paper

43 x 51,6 cm

www.galeries.nl

Janaina Tschäpe / Edwin Abbot

“Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows – only hard with luminous edges – and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said ‘my universe’: but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.” 

Excerpt from novel:
Edwin Abbot
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
1884

Janaina Tschäpe (DE/US)

Flatland

2012

mixed media on canvas

305 x 914 cm 

Courtesy of Fortes Vilaca Gallery

http://www.janainatschape.net

Erin Lawlor / Titian

Titian

The Flaying of Marsyas

c.1570-1576

oil on canvas

212 x 207 cm

Quite simply because it's all about the paint!

Erin Lawlor 2013

Erin Lawlor (EN/FR)

Flagship

2013

oil on linen

162 x 130 cm

Erin Lawlor (EN/FR)
In flagrante

2013

oil on linen

81 x 60 cm

www.erinlawlor.com

Toon Verhoef / Clorindo Testa

Clorindo Testa
Untitled

1962 
oil on canvas 
59,1 x 45,1 cm

The first artist who had a profound influence on me was Clorindo Testa, an Argentine painter and architect. I saw his work when I was 15 in Buenos Aires, where I lived in the 60's. His work spoke of the city - its grey/white concrete walls, marked, stained, graffiti, endless featureless streets, sprawling disconsolate suburbs, dust, heat, courtyards with radios playing tango, echoing the words of Homero Manzi's immortal "Sur"...

Sur,
paredón y después,
Sur,
una luz de almacén...
 
San Juan y Boedo antiguo, y todo el cielo
Pompeya y más allá la inundación...

The idea that the experience of reality could be transformed into a non-representational image, with no narrative, was an astounding discovery for me. Then I knew I wanted to make paintings.
Clorindo Testa died in April 2013, at the age of 89.

Toon Verhoef 2013

Toon Verhoef (NL)

No title
2012
oil and acrylic on canvas

150 x 100 cm 
www.toonverhoef.com

T.J. Donovan / Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein

Now Here's My Plan: A Book of Futilities
1960

published by Simon and Schuster

My contribution is the wonderful Shel Silverstein (1930–1999). Silverstein was an American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. Shel Silverstein inspired me at a very young age and shall continue to do so forever. My wife and I read Silverstein’s books to our daughter Lily every night before she closes her eyes. Silverstein speaks to both the young and the old, and most often simultaneously. He reminds us all of what’s at stake. He helps us to guide our children toward a life of dreaming, loving and standing up for what they believe in, all the while reminding us of these virtues we so often forget.

T.J. Donovan 2013

T.J. Donovan (US)

Untitled

2013

oil on canvas

123,2 x 122 x 5 cm (48.5 x 48 x 2 inches)

www.tjdonovanart.com

T.J. Donovan and his daughter Lily, Boston, MA, 2009

René Korten / Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico

The Mocking of Christ

1440-41
fresco in the convent of San Marco, Florence

187 x 151 cm

When I first saw the frescoes of Fra Angelico in the convent of San Marco in Florence many years ago, they made a big impression on me. Fra Angelico painted a scene of the life of Christ in each of the monk’s cells, enabling the praying monk to envision the scene and contemplate about it in his private space.
Especially this fresco of The Mocking of Christ in cell 7 had an extraordinary impact on me. The painting depicts fragmentary details of Christ's tormentors. The space is rendered with clarity and coherence that accentuates the strangeness of the mocking symbols suspended in air against a brightly colored plane. Christ’s humiliations of spitting, slapping and beating are not shown in their full violence in a complex narrative work, but they are shown as fragments, reduced to a series of symbols. The beautiful color scheme of the fresco and the clarity and complexity of these gestures struck me and had a big influence.
René Korten, 2013

 
René Korten (NL)

Dub 1, Living Door

2011
acrylic, graphite, charcoal on mdf

120 x 154 cm 
www.renekorten.nl

Michael de Kok / Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko

No. 14

1960
oil on canvas

290,8 x 268,3 cm
collection SFMOMA

His mature works consist of two or three diffuse rectangles of saturated color. Their effect is one of luminosity and floating in an indefinable space. Rothko often worked on a large scale, seeking to envelop the viewer in an experience of intimacy and spiritual transcendence.

Source: sfmoma.org

Michael de Kok

Playground 

2013  
oil on linnen

150 x 170 cm 

www.michaeldekok.com