A NOT B walks us along the fine line between common sense and uncommon nonsense in a realm reminiscent of pre-school books, assessment tests and optical illusions. Uta Eisenreich is fascinated by the attempt to establish order within an inconsistent reality that constantly exceeds the borders of comprehension. She photographs ever-changing combinations of elementary objects arranged by basic methods of classification. From one image to the other, the meaning of things keeps transforming. A web of clues and associations is spun, in which one is triggered to discern underlying patterns and construct sense of the illusory correlations of a-logic connections.
Exceptionally well designed & fascinating artist's book.

This publication appeared on the occasion of the exhibition 'Steven Aalders Cardinal Points' at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag from January to April 2010, in which the paintings of Steven Aalders enter into a dialogue with the museum's architecture created by H.P.Berlage and a selection of art works from the museum's collection.
This dialogue with other works of art is a means that works particularly well for Aalders. He reflects and analyses the work of Mondrian(the museum has the largest collection of Mondrians in the world), Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Jan Schoonhoven and Ad Dekkers.
This publication is entirely consistent with the spirit of Aalders; it is the result of careful collaboration between the artist and the designer Irma Boom.

Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic' has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. She has lived and worked in the Netherlands since the early 70's. This catalogue documents approximately fifty of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career, including re-creations by other performers and a new work performed by the artist for the exhibition. The volume spans more than four decades of Abramovic's interventions, sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, and solo performances as well as her collaborative performances with the German artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen).

An accompanying CD with audio commentary by Abramovic' guides the reader through the book. Includes 345 images.

'Findings on Elasticity' features the work of 50 artists and scientists who shape the way we look at the world today. Pars invited them to respond to elasticity, the binding interest in their work. Their findings range from the quirky, humorous and beautiful to the mind-bogglingly complex and disturbing.
'Findings on Elasticity' is the second volume in the Atlas of Creative Thinking. It will act as a visual and textual guide through the ideas and visions of those artists and scientists who shape the way we look at the world we live and take part in. In this way PARS wants to capture what takes place in both the artist’s studio and the laboratory. The first volume in the series was Findings on Ice.

The book has been designed by the award winning Dutch designer Joost Grootens.

First extensive monograph about the work of the Belgian artist Michel François.
"In a seemingly marked-out, hierarchical world which is far more chaotic and uncontrolled than it appears, Michel François's essentially sculptural work, which on the contrary is obviously chaotic and subtly framed, is a model of sensual and ideological reconfiguration of the immediate. His delight in forms and games of representation derives from his wonderment at the world's materials, nature, situations or ideas. Despite the sometimes sombre rawness of some references, the artist ultimately sets out to reconcile what are sometimes distant and contradictory fields in the world of art. Highly formal sculpture underpinned by a set of complex theoretical and ideological strata, laying claim to a liberal art, while accepting the slavish share of work. The ideological issues of modernity (the everyday as material, art as a cosa mentale, universality of forms, abstraction, seriality), without ignoring the great issues of classical art (perspective, nature, manual work, metaphor, illusion, trompe-l'oeil). A focus on the world and on the intimate sphere, neutralised by elegant detachment from forms. Representative clarity and simplicity, contrasted with indeterminate perception. In short, acceptance of physical and moral responsibility for the fundamental demands of sculpture, without sacrificing freedom, risk and uncertainty." (Text-Guillaume Desanges)

Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) is perhaps best known as a prime mover in 'De Stijl', the Dutch artistic movement that demanded an elemental, abstract vocabulary in both painting and architecture.
This study, accompanying a major touring exhibition, reveals for the first time the true extent of his involvement with Dada and Constructivist artists' groups spread across the whole of Europe,as far as Russia and beyond, and the breadth of his creative practice in fields as diverse as film, typography, graphic design and music.
A man of multiple talents and identities, he was inspired by the catastrophe of the First World War to attempt nothing less than the reshaping of culture in its entirety and the construction of a new world order.

In & Out of Amsterdam presents more than 120 works—including works on paper, installations, films, and photographs— by artists who were part of this remarkable creative culture, including Bas Jan Ader, Stanley Brouwn, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Hanne Darboven, Gilbert & George, Sol LeWitt, Charlotte Posenenske, Alan Ruppersberg and Lawrence Weiner. Essays by an array of scholars, accompanied by lively illustrations and documentary photographs, illuminate their significance as well as the unprecedented role that prints, bulletins, posters, mail art, artists' books, and other ephemera played in the artists' discourse.

"Ger van elk has been working on his multifaceted oeuvre for more than forty years. As an artist he occupies a nonconformist position: earnest, radical, witty and always engaged in a quest for ambiguity.
Van Elk produced his first works in the early 1960s, after studying in Amsterdam, Groningen and Los Angeles. It was a period in which he developed a theoretical foundation that has remained highly important throughout his career. He demonstrated that he was a rebellious and free spirit with his tent installations, actions, experiments with a diversity of media and collaborations with other artists. He inquired into the role of the artist and rejected personal expression, jettisoning traditional views about the art object and the production of art. Like a great many of his contemporaries he was preoccupied by issues such as authorship and the original, questions that proved to be highly significant in the development of Conceptual Art. In the 1960s, '70s and '80s he spent extended periods in Los Angeles, where he met kindred spirits such as William Leavitt, Allen Ruppersberg and John Baldessari. He also rekindled his friendship with Bas Jan Ader, whose acquaintance he had already made in the Netherlands.
In every phase of his artistic career he has held the foundations of visual art up to the light, sometimes in a carefree manner but at other times villainously or disruptively." (From the Foreword of this book).

There has never been a comprehensive study of Van Elk's work until now. This publication provides a wide-ranging introduction to his work; it presents a meticulous but ample selection from his oeuvre without being a catalogue raisonné.

"This book came about in conjunction with the exhibition 'Paul Thek-In the Context of Today's Contemporay Art' organized in 2007-2009 by ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Sammlung Falckenberg Hamburg, in cooperation with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. Many of Paul Thek's moste important works, in particular 'The Tomb' and his environments, no longer exist. As a result, this artist, who caused such a stir in Europe as an ambassador of American art in the 1960s and 1970s, has been largely forgotten in an art world shaped by art history and institutions. But there is a community of diehard Thek fans, and it is thanks to the untiring work of the estate of George Paul Thek, that the memory of this great artist has been kept alive....
This book is not a catalogue for the exhibition, it is rather an anthology compiling documents and essays by more than twenty writers who have dealt in depth with Thek's oeuvre....
Parts two, three, and four of the book contain a collection of scattered and hard-to-find source material and early texts. There are also previously unpublished texts including one by Harald Szeemann, director of documenta 5, for the exhibition at the ICA in Philadelphia (1977), and the transcipt of a panel discussion held in the context of the Thek show at Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (1995), on the possiblities for preserving and restoring ephemeral art and works that are programmed to decay." (Taken from the introduction by the editors)

"'Edgar Fernhout Modernist' laat zien hoe de schilder Edgar Fernhout zich na de Tweede Wereldoorlog ontwikkelde en behandelt zijn artistieke volwassenheid. Vanaf het eind van de jaren veertig werden Fernhouts stillevens, landschappen en portretten opgebouwed uit steeds nadrukkelijker verfstreken die het beeld ritmisch structureren. In 1955 verhuisde hij van Amsterdam naar Bergen. Daar maakte hij na verloop van tijd introverte, abstracte werken. Met de typische structuren en gevoelige kleurstellingen in deze schilderijen, laat hij zijn beleving van de nature zien.
Zo ontwikkelde hij zich van neorealist die de zichtbare werkelijkheid weergaf tot een schilder die zijn eigen werkelijkheid zichbaar maakte; van een schilder van licht in een ruimte tot een schilder van ruimtescheppend licht." (Uitgevers tekst)

Constant Nieuwenhuys, bekend als de beeldend kunstenaar Constant, wordt alom beschouwd als een van de belangrijkste Nederlandse kunstenaars van de 20e eeuw. Na zijn Cobratijd en de New Babylon-periode gooit Constant het roer rigoureus om en gaat hij weer schilderen in een tijd dat de schilderkunst in een crisis verkeert. Tegen de stroom in brengt hij in de periode 1969-2005 een boeiend, rijk en gevarieerd oeuvre tot stand. Constant genereert in de late periode opnieuw nieuwe artistieke visies en blijkt, zijns ondanks, een voorloper van het postmodernisme te zijn. Zijn experimenten met kleur en licht, gecombineerd met zijn niet-aflatend kritisch maatschappelijk engagement, leveren indrukwekkende, kleurrijke tijdsbeelden op, die diep raken. Hiermee plaatst hij zichzelf in de coloristische traditie van klassieke meesters als Titiaan, Delacroix en Cézanne en blijkt hij bovendien een waardevolle bijdrage aan het colorisme na Cézanne te leveren. Deze ontwikkelingen worden in 'Constant De late periode' op bijzondere wijze tot leven gebracht.
Deze rijkgeïllustreerde uitgave over het werk en leven van Constant Nieuwenhuys (1923-2005) verschijnt mede ter gelegenheid van de expositie van het late werk in het Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in 2008-2009. Dit lijvige boek, vol met prachtige afbeeldingen van de schilderijen van Constant, waaronder enkele nog nooit gepubliceerde, is geschreven en samengesteld door kunsthistoricus Trudy van der Horst (1942), Constants laatste echtgenote.

Extensive catalogue of the late work of Constant Nieuwenhuys (1923-2005), one of the Netherlands most important painters of the 20th century. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in 2008-2009, this lavishly illustrated catalogue has been written and produced by Constant's last wife, the art-historian Trudy van der Horst.

Marc Mulders (b.1958) is one of the Netherlands leading painters of the day. His colourful work with it's references to life and death has already found it's way into various museum collections both in the Netherlands and abroad. He has been awarded many times for his work including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1985.

Elixir is a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ comprising nine installations by the Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist. The exhibition’s floor plan resembles a living being with a stomach, heart and lungs. Elixir is a video organism that has grown organically from Rist’s lively oeuvre.
Pipilotti Rist and her loyal team have made large-scale installations since the late 1990s. In these works equal importance is given to the experience of the video images, the soundtrack and the space. Some of the installations in Elixir have been shown previously in another form in other locations. In 2007 ‘A la belle étoile’ filled the enormous plaza in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and ‘Homo Sapiens Sapiens’ was made for the vaulted ceiling of the church of San Stae in Venice in 2005. With each site-specific installation Rist provides a highly personal interpretation of the building’s architecture and atmosphere. She creates a unique universe: an earthly paradise tempered with social criticism and melancholy.
Elixir is the first major survey of Rist’s recent installations. By fusing the individual works Pipilotti Rist has transformed the museum into a place for extraordinary experiences and encounters. It is up to you, the visitor, to completely immerse yourself within it.
The catalogue is exceptionally well designed by the Dutch master book designer Irma Boom.

There is also a Dutch edition

Nicolaas Wijnberg heeft een zeer omvangrijk oeuvre opgebouwd, variërend van schilderijen, tekeningen, grafiek en wandschilderingen tot affiches, theaterdecors, en publicaties op velerlei gebied.
Nicolaas Wijnberg 1918-2006 besteedt uitvoerig aandacht aan alle kanten van deze bijzondere kunstenaar. In diepgravende essays behandelen verschillende auteurs ieder een door Wijnberg beoefende kunstvorm. In elk essay wordt tevens met een rijke illustratieve keuze uit zijn werk zichtbaar gemaakt hoe Nicolaas Wijnberg de meest uiteenlopende beeldende middelen beheerste. In dit boek zijn ook overzichten opgenomen van zijn publicaties, zijn grafisch werk en zijn monumentale kunst.

Nicolas Wijnberg was a many sided Dutch artist who created an exceptional oeuvre consisting of paintings, drawings, prints, murals, affiches, theater-decors and publications. His work is to be found in many museums, galleries and private collections in the Netherlands and abroad.

Charley Toorop (1891-1955) geldt als de krachtigste vrouw in de Nederlandse schilderkunst van de twintigste eeuw. Ze schiep een eigenzinnig, zelfbewust en sociaal bewogen oeuvre.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen toont in een grote overzichtstentoonstelling 120 schilderijen, waaronder zestien zelfportretten. De tentoonstelling is samengesteld door Marja Bosma. Zij schreef ook de publicatie over het leven en werk van Charley Toorop. In de tentoonstelling en het boek wordt inzichtelijk gemaakt hoe sleutelwerken passen binnen het oeuvre dat wordt gekenmerkt door een confronterend realisme.

Charley Toorop (1891-1955) is regarded as the most prominent female Dutch artist of the 20th century. She created an oeuvre that is strong-willed, self-aware and socially committed.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is presenting a large-scale retrospective of her work, displaying 120 paintings, among which sixteen self-portraits. The exhibition has been put together by Marja Bosma, who has also written a book about the life and work of Charley Toorop. Both the exhibition and the book make it easy to see how key works fit into the larger body of her work that is characterised by a confrontational realism.
As daughter of the famous symbolist Jan Toorop, Charley grew up with a deep interest in culture. At first she concentrated on music, but eventually chose painting. For her, painting was the ultimate form of self-realisation.
After an unsuccessful marriage to Henk Fernhout, with whom she had three children, Charley Toorop settled in Bergen, North Holland. Painting and her artistic calling always occupied a primary position in her life. Her house ‘De Vlerken’ was a meeting place for a select circle of artistic friends, which included Piet Mondriaan, Adriaan Roland Holst and Gerrit Rietveldt.

In the summer of 2008, Arnhem will host the 10th Sonsbeek International Sculpture Exhibition, entitled 'Grandeur'. Artistic director Anna Tilroe has invited 28 artists of world renown to visualise the aspiration for human greatness. An exhibition about the urge, the dream, the conflict and the struggle that are linked to this aspiration. The works of art show 'Grandeur on a human scale'.
Residents of Arnhem carried the works of art through the streets in a magnificent Procession. In this way, Sonsbeek 2008 seeks to involve society in art. The Procession formed the prelude to the official opening of the exhibition in the beautiful Park Sonsbeek.

The Sonsbeek 2008 catalogue features the 26 works of art as a running pictorial narrative, shown in the context of many other images. In an approach that is both fascinating and intelligent, the broader art-historical and cultural foundations of the works of art are brought to light. The 276 pages of this A-4 sized book, in full colour and gold, contain more than 500 images, and essays by Anna Tilroe, Bas Heijne, Wouter Hillaert and Nanda Janssen. The cover of the catalogue is a leporello or foldout poster with a photographic report of the procession through Arnhem and pictures of the definitive works of art standing in Sonsbeek Park.

"Kunst op Kamers" is an art manifestation which takes place during one weekend in a small village north of Amsterdam. Organized something on the idea of "Chamber d'Ami" the artists present their work in the private houses of the village. There is a wide diversity in the presented work; there are painters, scupltures, graphic & product designers, weavers, musicians, and writers.
Originated in 1998 by Sonja Besselink and Ronald Steen this is the fifth exhibition in 10 years. One of the important aspects of the exhibition is that there is always a book or catalogue made and each time a different graphic designer is ask to produce it. This years catalogue is a 'tour de force' designed by Irma Boom.
A collectors item!

Born in Capetown, South Africa, in 1953, Marlene Dumas has lived in Amsterdam since 1976. Over the last three decades she has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S., including the Tate Gallery, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1995 she represented The Netherlands at the 46th Venice Biennale. In the last several years her work has reached the highest levels of commercial value in the international art world; she is now the most expensive woman artist in the world.

In her expressionistic drawings and paintings of the last three decades, Dumas has focused on the human figure, probing themes of love, desire, despair and confusion in order to slyly critique social and political attitudes toward women, children, people of colour and others who have historically been victimized. From her evocative portraits, based on photographs of friends and family as well as figures culled from printed pornography, to her large-scale images highlighting charged relationships within groups, Dumas' work explores the contradictions behind the physical reality of the body, merging acute social commentary with personal experience and art-historical antecedent to create unsettling and ambiguous psychological statements.
Accompanying Dumas' first major mid-career survey in the U.S., with stops in three major American cities, this substantial, fully-illustrated publication features a newly commissioned essay by renowned scholar Richard Shiff, placing the artist's work in relation to both American figurative painting since the 1980s and Abstract Expressionism. The book also includes curator Cornelia H. Butler's examination of Dumas' photographic sources and shorter texts by Lisa Gabrielle Mark and Matthew Monahan. Writings by the artist, as well as an extensive illustrated exhibition history and bibliography, complete this comprehensive examination of the work of one of the most thought-provoking artists working today.

"This timely volume challenges the narrow Western-centrism of most art historical models. Archeologists have found that, for tens of thousands of years, all human cultures have shared a desire for visual representation or expression. Yet the study of art history has traditonally focused on Western artworks of the past few centuries. 'World Art Studies' examines the phenomenon of art through a broader cultural, global, and temporal perspective, bringing together a uniquely exhaustive range of perspectives on art and borrowing approaches from the study of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology and geography as models - alongside more conventional art historical perspectives. In musicology or linguistics, using such diverse viewpoints for reflection and research is considered part of the normal process. In that spirit, this volume goes beyond abstract models, using case studies to demonstrate and examine specific methods of investigation." (Publishers text)

In de hoofdtekst van Klaas Gubbels - De Voortgang voert auteur/regisseur Cherry Duyns een dialoog met de kunstenaar over de totstandkoming van zijn werk. Daarnaast toont dit unieke boek de eerste stappen die Gubbels zette van schilderen naar driedimensionaal werken. Het geeft een overzicht van de cortenstalen beelden die zijn ontstaan sinds het nieuwe millennium, documentaire foto's van Vincent Mentzel en Cherry Duyns en een indrukwekkende collectie hoofdzakelijk recente schilderijen. De dvd 'Stilleven van een schilder' van Jan Louter bevat prachtig beeldmateriaal: de uitzending van Het uur van de Wolf die aan Gubbels werd gewijd (2003) plus opnames van diverse, nooit eerder gepubliceerde interviews. Deze nieuwe uitgave maakt duidelijk dat het oeuvre van Klaas Gubbels nog steeds levendig en in ontwikkeling is.
De Voortgang is in samenwerking met Galerie Willy Schoots Eindhoven, Livingstone gallery Den Haag en Steendrukkerij Amsterdam tot stand gekomen.

Klaas Gubbels (b.Rotterdam 1934) is a contemporary Dutch artist who works in many different materials but his themes are resticted mainly to still-lives using tables, chairs and coffee pots.

Forty-six emerging and renowned artists and scientists from around the world were invited by the Pars Foundation to submit their 'thought-notations' on Ice. This fascinating and very well designed book is the first in a series by the Pars Foundation which will constitute an atlas of creative thinking at the beginning of the 21st century. The series will act as a visual and textual guide through the ideas and visions of those artists and scientists who shape the way we look at the world today.
The Pars foundation believes that arts and sciences are essentially creative processes and the world is both a playground and a field of research and that artists and scientists alike require vision, application and above all, curiosity, passion and intuition. Pars wants to capture what takes place in the artist's studio, out in the research field and in the laboratory.

Since the 1960s, Peter Struycken (b. 1939) has been one of the foremost artists in the Netherlands. His artistic work is amply represented in the collections of almost every important museum of modern art. He has also realized hundreds of commissions, including major projects in public space, colour palettes for a diversity of applications and the standard Dutch postage stamp with the portrait of Queen Beatrix, which he designed for the Post Office as far back as 1980. His most renowned large-scale works include the arcade lighting (1993) for the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, a building designed by architect Jo Coenen, and the tiling and colour scheme for 'De Struyck' student flats (1993) in The Hague, a building designed by Carel Weeber.
This publication offers a comprehensive overview of all Struycken's work from 1955 to the present. There are illustrations of more than 80 of Struycken's most significant monumental projects and autonomous works, each accompanied by an entry with relevant information. Various authors explain Struycken's methodology as well as the underlying theories and concepts regarding colour that underlie these projects.
A DVD is included with the book, so that readers can experience a number of Struycken's key monumental works in 360-degree panorama photos, shot in spectacular fashion by Carel Struycken.

There is also a Dutch edition.

This is the catalogue of the first solo exhibition in South Africa by Marlene Dumas and as such can be seen as a much deserved tribute to the great talents of this internationally recognized visual artist.
The Cape Town born Marlene Dumas (1953) has lived for more than 30 years in the Netherlands where she has found a new home and inspiration for her iconaclastic paintings. She is regarded as one of the world's top living artists, established prominently amongst her contemporaries, and sought after commercially by major museums and private collectors.

When he died in 1992, Dutch artist César Domela left behind an oeuvre that was as substantial as it was varied. Part of it passed into the possession of his daughters, Lie Tugayé-Domela Nieuwenhuis and Anne Dutter-Domela Nieuwenhuis. They are now donating thirteen of the relevant works to the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. The gift forms an important addition to the museum’s existing Domela collection, expanding it to provide a complete overview of the work of this multifaceted artist.
Domela was born in 1900 as the youngest son of the well-known Dutch socialist politician Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. At an early age, he moved to Italy, where he rubbed shoulders with a number of avant-garde artists. Soon after that, he met Mondrian, Van Doesburg and other members of the De Stijl group, of which he himself became the youngest member in 1924. However, Domela’s artistic development took a different direction from that of most of his fellow-members. He devoted himself increasingly to the development of reliefs: three-dimensional paintings, in which he ascribed a major role to the diagonal. He also experimented with photomontages for use in the world of commercial advertising.
This publication is the catalogue of an exhibition which is being held in the Sprengel Museum in Hannover and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

Deze nieuwe uitgave biedt een representatief overzicht van Helmantels omvangrijke oeuvre dat hij in de afgelopen 40 jaar opbouwde.
In vier essays wordt vanuit verschillende perspectieven naar Helmantels werk gekeken. Er wordt ondermeer ingegaan op het licht in zijn werk en de overeenkomst met zeventiende eeuwse Nederlandse schilderkunst.
Rein Pol schrijft over Helmantels eigen collectie objecten en werk van andere kunstenaars.

Henk Helmantel is a very successful 'realist' Dutch painter who in the last 40 years has built up a considerable reputation in the Netherlands and internationally. This publication celebrates in picture and words those 40 years and gives a representative overview of his oeuvre.

"Jacobus Kloppenburg (b.1930), a native of Amsterdam, reflects the ideal of the homo universalis as an artist, designer, and musician, as a man of many talents and profound learning. As a friend of Joseph Beuys, his works are found at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, but perhaps the greatest attention must be turned to his 'Artchive for the Future Trashtethical Litterature' project. This completely unique archive was located in Kloppenburg's Amsterdam studio. Over the course of several decades it grew into a 'Gesamtkunstwerk' of fascinating proportions. Despite massive protests, this bizarre construction made up of objects trouvés, furniture and images became the victim of renovation measures in the late 1990s and since then is threatened to be destroyed.
With this publication, important documents on the contemporary development of a highly unusual artist have been preserved and are made available to the public. They also witness the conflict with the City of Amsterdam and show a cross section of his work ranging from his early paintings through photo-collages all the way to the rooms he created." (Publishers text)

Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL) was established in 1995 by Joep van Lieshout(b. 1963). The contrarian applied art by the Rotterdam-based AVL collective is presented all over the world at dozens of exhibitions each year. Often produced using polyester, the objects, furniture, machines and luxuriously appointed 'mobile homes' are not only intriguing in form and ingeniously constructed, but they are also surprisingly multifunctional.
This richly illustrated publication provides an overview of AVL's new, serious and often provocative work: from items of furniture and mobile architecture to wholly self-sufficient 'survival campers', autonomous communes and surrealistic art projects. One of the highlights is AVL's biggest project so far: AVL-Ville (2001), a 'free state' that Atelier Van Lieshout created in Rotterdam's port, complete with its own flag, its own constitution and its own currency.
The most important projects by AVL, the collective's sources of inspiration and its members' reflections on art, architecture and design in a social context are described in an essay by the art critic Jennifer Allen. In his essay, Aaron Betsky approaches AVL's work from his expert perspective as an architecture and design critic. An essay by the sociologist Rudi Laermans examines the functioning of urban society in relation to AVL's projects.

Having completed her sculpture training at the Rotterdam Academy of Art (1971), it was a conscious choice on the part of Hetty Heyster (1943) to choose some of Europe’s zoos (including those in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Genk) as work terrain for studying natural forms.
Using animals as ‘models’ offered varied and inspiring material for Heyster to find her own way. In the Eighties and Nineties she acquired major assignments (depicting cheetahs, gorillas, sea-lions and buffalos) that show a development towards a sculpturally powerful language of form. Her sculptures are all about the expression of a life force, a vitality from within which becomes more tangible the closer you approach natural forms and observe them more intensely.
The artist gives a largely autobiographical, bird’s eye account about three decades of the art of sculpture as seen from an insider and against the background of a specific zeitgeist.

Na het beëindigen van de beeldhouwopleiding aan de Rotterdamse Academie (1971), was het een bewuste keuze van Hetty Heyster (1943) om de Europese dierentuinen (onder andere Artis, Antwerpen, Genk) te kiezen als werkterrein voor de studie van natuurvormen.
Het dier als ‘model’ bood veelzijdig en inspirerend materiaal om een eigen weg te gaan. In de jaren tachtig en negentig verwierf zij grote opdrachten (cheeta’s, gorilla’s, zeeleeuwen, buffels), die een ontwikkeling naar een sculpturaal krachtige vormentaal laten zien. In haar beelden gaat het om de expressie van een ‘life-force’, een groeikracht van binnenuit die voelbaar wordt naarmate men natuurvormen dichter nadert en intensiever observeert.
Grotendeels autobiografisch beschrijft de kunstenaar in vogelvlucht en tegen de achtergrond van een tijdgeest, in drie decennia het beeldhouwvak van binnenuit gezien.

"Before he gained a reputation as the sculptor of the National Monument on Amsterdam’s Dam square (1948-1956), Rädecker’s work had undergone an interesting development. His earliest work shows diverse influences, ranging from Art Nouveau to non-European art and Cubism. His breakthrough occurred around 1909-1911 when he began making luminist paintings, in keeping with international modernism. In Paris between 1911 and 1914 he adopted an abstract style for a while. After the First World War he received acclaim as an influential expressionist sculptor with a very personal blend of style influences. He deviated from the classic motifs of sculpture by enriching the medium with visionary heads as well as human and animal forms that were as yet unfamiliar to the art of sculpture. At the same time he worked in a very naturalistic manner, which became increasingly the case from 1929 on. Around this time his earlier distorted sculptures made way for a more classical approach.
This monograph gives a general account of Rädecker’s life and work as well as an oeuvre catalogue containing some 650 works. It is the 22nd volume in a series on Dutch artists of the 20th century." (Publisher's text)

"Voordat hij naam kreeg als beeldhouwer van het Nationaal Monument op de Dam (1948-1956) heeft Rädecker een interessante ontwikkeling doorgemaakt. Zijn vroegste werk vertoont uiteenlopende invloeden, variërend van jugendstil tot buiten-europese kunst en kubisme. Zijn doorbraak vond omstreeks 1909-1911 plaats; hij maakte toen luministische schilderijen, aansluitend bij het internationale modernisme. In Parijs werkte hij in de jaren 1911-1914 tijdelijk abstract. Na de Eerste Wereldoorlog kreeg hij internationale bekendheid als invloedrijk expressionistisch beeldhouwer met een zeer persoonlijke menging van stijlinvloeden. Hij week af van de klassieke motieven van de beeldhouwkunst door haar te verrijken met visionaire koppen en mens- en dierfiguren die de beeldhouwkunst tot op dat moment nog niet gekend had. Tegelijkertijd was hij in staat om zeer naturalistisch te werken wat vooral vanaf 1929 steeds meer het geval was. Omstreeks die tijd maakten zijn vroege deformaties plaats voor een meer klassieke benadering.
Deze monografie bevat naast een algemene beschrijving van het leven en werk van Rädecker een oeuvre-catalogus die ongeveer 650 werken omvat." (Uitgevers tekst)

The Dutch born painter Bram van Velde (1895-1981) was first trained as a house & decoration painter, but from 1922 to 1924 he studied at the artists colony Worpswede in Germany and then moved to Paris where he was to spend a large portion of his life, with intervals in Corsica and later in Geneva. The early influences of northern expressionism were moderated by the colour and imprecise forms of Picasso and Matisse and after 1945 van Velde developed a unique poetic form; although he never associated himself with any movements his work is regarded as belonging to the French "Art Informel" which developed parallel with Abstract Expressionism after 1945.
After important exhibitions in Amsterdam, Köln, Maastricht, Paris, Valencia and Madrid van Velde is now recognised as a major artist of the 20th century. This monograph is the first extensive overview of Bram van Velde's complete oeuvre and is published to coincide with an exhibition held in Dordrecht(NL).

"Bram van Velde wordt in 1895 in Zoeterwoude geboren. Bij zijn opleiding in het Haagse huis- en decoratieschilders-bedrijf Kramers komt zijn coloristisch talent als kunstschilder tot uiting en wordt hij ingewijd in de wereld van de kunst en de literatuur. Van 1922 tot in 1924 werkt hij met een toelage van Kramers in de schilderskolonie Worpswede.
Vanaf eind 1924 leeft en werkt Bram van Velde in Parijs, onderbroken door een vierjarig verblijf op Mallorca (1932-1936). Hij verwerkt de invloed van Picasso en vooral Matisse tot een uiterst persoonlijk œuvre.
Na de oorlog komen er tentoonstellingen in Bern, Amsterdam, Keulen, Parijs en de Verenigde Staten. Willem Sandberg, directeur van het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, wijdt diverse exposities aan Bram van Velde en koopt ook werk van hem aan.
Met een grote overzichtstentoonstelling in Maastricht, het Parijse Centre Pompidou, Valencia en Madrid wordt Bram van Velde erkend tot de klassiek-moderne schilders van de twintigste eeuw.
In deze rijk geïllustreerde monografie wordt voor het eerst een integraal en volledig overzicht van het leven en werk van Bram van Velde gegeven" (Uitgeverstekst)

This book is a remarkable, retrospective publication which fully documents all of Armando's sculptures, currently numbering 126 works produced between 1988 and 2006.
Painter, draughtsman, sculptor, poet/writer, filmmaker and musician Armando(b.1929) is a multi-talented artist whose exceptional and richly variegated work shows an extremely adventurous spirit, driven by a 'Trieb', a compulsion to which he has to submit. Over a period of more than fifty years he has built up an impressive oeuvre with a penetrating theme: human tragedy.

We have several original, signed and numbered lithographs by Armando for sale in our collection.

Click here for Lithographs by Armando

Born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa and since 1976 working and residing in the Netherlands Marlene Dumas is one of the foremost contemporary painters of her generation. She has won international fame with a powerful oeuvre of frank drawings and paintings showing faces, children, new born babies, and grown women and men. Dumas paints human beings in different phases of life; from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Her subject matter is fundamental: sex, birth & death; fundamental in life, as in the history of art. There is inquisitiveness, boldness and openness in the way that she conveys the image of another human being. What comes across is the urge for a dialogue founded on respect.

"Painter, draughtsman, sculptor, poet/writer, filmmaker and musician Armando(b.1929) is a multi-talented artist whose exceptional and richly variegated work shows an extremely adventurous spirit, driven by a 'Trieb', a compulsion to which he has to submit. Over a period of more than fifty years he has built up an impressive oeuvre with a penetrating theme: human tragedy.
The young Armando belonged to the first post-war generation - a pessimistic and anti-bourgeois generation. He developed an individual style in which he sought to translate his personal experiences as objectively as possible into images, text and music. The paintings from this period are anti-aesthetic with aggressive, heavily applied layers of paint, predominantly black & red. Over the years, the figures have become less menacing and aggressive; he visualizes the existential melancholy.
The colour eventually returned to Armando's palette, much to the surprise of the artist himself. During the past five years he has painted landscapes and seascapes in blue and green. The heads and figures in his paintings have become vulnerable and transparent. Armando allows it all to wash over him; he is subservient to his 'Trieb'." (Authors text)
This small, nicely designed book, is published to coincide with the exhibition 'Armando 1952-2005' being held in the Cobra Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen(NL).

We have several original, signed and numbered lithographs by Armando for sale in our collection.

Gerrit Benner (1897-1981) holds a unique position in Dutch twentieth century art and he was a loner who refused to join any group of artists. He was a hard worker who sought his own way in the art world. The paintings in this book show that individualism in all its facets; his close bond with (the Friesian) nature translated into landscapes, figures, riders and horses in wonderful primary colours, in a unique style which is powerful, simple and very expressionistic. Benner managed to retain simplicity and wonderment in his work, although he went on developing far into old age.

Born and raised in an academic & socially influential milieu, Otto van Rees travelled extensively and had contact with many leading artists and cultural personalities during his youth. He began painting at 16 and in 1904 on the advise of Jan Toorop went to Paris where he quickly assimilated into the modernistic art world, becoming friends with many of the leading painters & writers of the avant-garde. His oeuvre is extensive and shows the influences of the times in which he lived.
This is the first major study of Otto's life and work, supplying extensive information about his childhood, his relationship with Adya Dutilh, their children, and the bohemian life-style that they maintained. The book contains a selected oeuvre catalogue prepared by Irène Lesparre with 453 entries.

"Over the last ten years, walks in North America, Asia, Scandinavia and Europe have shown me breathtaking landscapes and sites of incredible natural beauty. For me, physical walking and inner motion are metaphors for each other. I want to go on discovering and searching for variety and potential in myself and in my subject. The source of my material is nature and its phenomena.
The inspiration of an exotic yet brutal environment is translated into large format charcoal and chalk drawings. The image emerges in the balance between the act of drawing and the urge to depict reality." (Erik Odijk)

Wim Beeren was one of the most influential people in the Dutch art world during the 1960's,70's and 80's. He was conservator in the Haags Gemeentemuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, lecturer at the University of Groningen, and he was director of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam from 1975 to 1985 and director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1985 to 1993. As exhibition maker he was responsible for the introduction of pop art, land art and conceptual art to the Dutch art world and he created several of the most talked about exhibitions of the period including 'Op losse schroeven'in 1969, 'Sonsbeek 71', the big Malevich exhibition in 1989 and 'Energieën'in 1990.
During his working life he published extensively on modern art, individual artists and the general art climate of his day. This book, 'Wim Beeren - on de kunst' is an extensive collection of his articles and essays on the position of art, it's museums and their relation to society; the quality of much of his insight remains relevant to this day. His essays on contemporary artists include Armando, Corneille, Marcel Duchamp, Ger van Elk, Keith Haring, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Malevich, Walter De Maria, Sigmar Polke and Co Westerik.

Willem de Kooning, regarded as the leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, is celebrated in the United States as one of the most significant figures in twentieth century painting. Yet the artist, who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1904 and died in New York in 1997, is still not fully recognized in Europe as the important figure he was. This applies in particular to his work of the sixties and seventies, which he spent on Long Island in retreat from urban life. This part of his oeuvre bears the imprint of a fundamental experience of landscape, and it is here that de Kooning developed a style of figuration which he never really abandoned, characterized by a new sense of colour and energetic gesture.
In this catalogue a concentrated selection of large paintings from this period shows how his works, although recognizable as landscapes, grew abstract under the influence of his intense experience of nature while hid brushwork literally liberated itself from all bonds. This book, featuring essays by Bürgi, Kertess and Ubl, and an interview with de Kooning conducted by Harold Rosenberg, focuses for the first time on this period of vigorous, pioneering creativity.

Kees Verwey (1900-1995)is generally accepted as one of the Netherlands most significant painters of the twentieth century, although his recognition came later in his life. He worked until a very old age and he became known for his large size magnificent still-lifes and portraits of famous contemporary personalities from the Dutch literary and cultural scene.
In this monograph (the most extensive until now) by museum director Rudi Fuchs and publicist Max van Rooy both the work and the sometimes turbulent life of the artist are extensively covered. Many unique private photographs help illustrate the text.

The Rotterdam artists Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol have been making work together for ten years. Proceeding from the engagement with the immediate surroundings they create installations, often architecturally inspired, which they fill with a specific programme. They thus confront the public with a specific place and force people to think about the history and future of that place, but also about the city in general. In their projects they also focus attention on the functionality and usefulness of art in a specific situation or place.
As mediators they deliberately attempt to influence the cultural climate and transform it in a constructive manner, by ameliorating situations, adding what is lacking, illuminating things that wallow in obscurity, and opening up issues or making them public.
This publication(again an interesting design from Irma Boom) is the first overview of projects by Bik Van der Pol over the last decade. Seven essays by leading authors draw attention to the breadth and significance of their methodology. The projects are thus placed within a critical framework and can serve as a source of inspiration for artists, architects, designers and theorists.

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) is generally considered to be one of the great painters of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Rotterdam (NL) where he studied art, he emigrated to New York in 1926. In the forties together with others such as Pollock he created a movement in art which became known as American Abstract Expressionism. In the fifties he started painting again in a figurative style showing crude images of big women which shocked many of his admirers and marked him as a traitor to the abstract movement. He later painted grandiose semi-abstract landscape images in vivid resonant colours. The vividness and brilliant management of his work kept him in the forefront of American art well into his old age.
This catalogue accompaines an retrospective exhibition which is being held at the KunstHal in his birth place of Rotterdam.

Dirk Filarski (1885-1964) was one of the major exponents of the Dutch expressionist school of painting which had it's most important representation in what is known as the Bergense School. Not only did Filarski spend much of his working life in and around the small North Holland village of Bergen but he also spent two periods of time between 1912 and 1917 in Switzerland.
Renée Smithuis, a former art dealer and one of the Netherlands experts on this period of painting, has produced the first major study of Filarski's work including the Swiss periods which she considers to be the high point of his work. She also portrays the painter in relationship to the other artists who made-up the Bergense School.

Herman Gordijn is one of the Netherlands best known living figurative painters. Especially the earlier work with its excentric, garish and sometimes gaudy women portrayed in bars, poolrooms, brothels or just in the street or on the bus, brought and is still bringing him much success.
This publication, which coincides with an exhibition in Zutphen, contains some 40 paintings, more than 100 drawings (including studies), etchings, lithographs and photos of himself often with many of the reallife models who were and are his women.

Commissioned by Jan Hoet for Documenta IX 'De Paviljoens' are a series of 5 temporary, transportable train carriage-like exhibition spaces standing on steel legs with a large level of transparency that were placed in a nature-environment allowing the exhibited artworks to be bathed in daylight and to communicate with their surroundings. After Documenta IX the newly created city of Almere in the Netherlands took over 'De Paviljoens' and had them transported to a park where they became one of the cultural landmarks of this fast growing urban development. Now ten years and many exhibitions later 'De Paviljoens' have more than proven themselves to be a challenging and unique exhibition space .
The designer Alon Levin working with the director of 'De Paviljoens' Macha Roesink has created a 'Journal of a Building' which interprets graphically the nomadic spirit and inclusive attitude of 'De Paviljoens' in a nonlinear structure using various inserts and paper stocks.
"The book is beautifully and meticulously crafted - a unique record of the story of an exceptional building". (Grafik 125, January 2005)

This extensive study analyses Willem Sandberg's tenure and acquisition policies as director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1945 to 1962. The major part of the book concentrates on the paintings and sculptures which he acquired and for the first time a complete catalogue of these pieces has been researched and printed. Further the book provides insight into the development of the photography, industrial design and applied arts collections which were assembled during his directorship.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum about Sandberg's influence.

The Holland Paper Biennial is being held this year for the 5th time and it has grown to be a household word in the international paper and art world, with its exhibitions and artists attracting more and more attention. This year there are two locations; The Gemeente Museum in Rijswijk(NL) and the CODA Museum in Apeldoorn(NL).
The conception of the biennale and it's always well designed publications are the products of Peter Gentenaar, himself a "paper artist".
This years catalogue presents the work of 30 international artists as well as containing 9 essays regarding various aspects of the history and use of paper within a religious significance in the Islamic world, by the Aztecs and the Mayas, Japanese 'washi', Korean funeral rites, Nepalese medicinal 'Daphine' paper and devotional prints. There is also a review of the first 10 years of the biennale and it's catalogues.

A revised and expanded edition of Schattschneider's classic study of M.C.Escher which is considered to be the most penetrating study of his work and the one most admired by mathematicians and scientists. It deals with one powerfull obsession that preoccupied Escher: what he called 'the regular division of the plane', the puzzel-like interlocking of natural forms in continuous patterns which is the trademark of his work.
'Visions of Symmetry' includes many of Escher's masterworks, as well as hundreds of lesser known examples of his work. This new edition also features a foreword by Douglas R.Hofstadter and an illustrated epilogue by the author that reveals new information about Escher's inspiration and shows how his ideas on symmetry have influenced mathematicians, computer scientists and contemporary artists.

Marlene Dumas is a South African-born, Amsterdam-based painter, and one of the Netherland's most internationally admired contemporary artists. Dumas recalls in her work the painterly gestures of Expressionism, whilst combining the critical distance of Conceptual Art with the pleasures of eroticism. Through her delicately painted oil-on-canvas or ink-and-watercolour works on the female form as well as portraits of children and erotic scenes, she comments on the state of painting today. Her affinity for language has formed an integral part of her work as a visual artist and over the last fifteen years she has written an impressive number of texts ranging from aphorisms and short poetic pieces to longer analytical texts, many of which are included in this monograph. Dutch art critic Dominic van den Boogerd surveys themes in Dumas's work in relation to a range of conceptual legacies in depictions of the human body and New York artist Barbara Bloom interviews Dumas on questions contemporary women artists are asked, from issues of intellectual process to the representation of the self.
This the first major monograph done about Marlene Dumas.

This large scale monograph covering the entire career of Corneilles work from just before the inception of the Cobra movement in 1948 to his most recent work in 2002 is a celebration created by Pierre Restany, the well known French art historian, for Corneilles 80th birthday. In text, photographs and many coloured reporductions of his paintings and sculptures the book offers one of the most extensive insights into the life and work of this founding member of the short-lived but influential Cobra movement.

This is the catalogue of the first major French retrospective of Constants work. The exhibition was held in the Picasso Museum in Antibes in the south of France in the Summer and Fall of 2001 and contained work from his earliest period directly after the Second World War, through his extensive Cobra period and continuing to include his most recent work.

This highly personal book is the chronicle of an impossible love-affair. It relates in images and words the intense feelings and emotions that Gerti Bierenbroodspot cherished and nourished for her "muse" Edittha de V. who lived in Florence. The time is the early seventies and the place is Gerti's atelier in the village of St.Guilhem-le-Désert in southern France.
This beautifully designed book reproduces in facsimilie the elaborate "love" letters that she wrote to Edittha, as well as her poems and a selection of her paintings from the period 1965-1982.

The dutch artist Gerti Bierenbroodspot uses archaeological worlds as the starting point for her paintings, sculpture and wall-rubbings, creating a highly personal vision of a modernity grand in theme as well as in manner. Like the painters of a past Golden Age she spends three months every year travelling along the magnificent archaeological trails of the Middle East. For the last 10 years she has been living and working among the ruins of three great Caravan Cities; Petra, Palmyra and Baalbeck. This very well designed book scholarly describes her travels, the sites and their histories, and discusses the complex and interactive affair of Bierenbroodspot's recent work, the extraordinary transformation of these ancient images into paintings of true authority and beauty.

Cornelis Theodorus Maria ('Kees') van Dongen (1877-1968) was one of the Netherlands most successful colorist (fauvism). He left Holland and went to Paris in 1897 where he was largely influenced by the French art movements of the time. He was to remain in France for his entire career and became a French citizen in 1929. Most well known for his portraits and his very colourful female nudes, he also painted landscapes, city views and still-lives. This catalogue of the exposition at the Fondation Giannada, Martigny, Switzerland is the first monograph on him in years.

The first major study of the life and work of the Dutch painter and graphic artist Otto B.de Kat who lived from 1907 to 1995. De Kat had a unique own style of figurative impressionism that was influenced by the work of Bonnard, Cézanne, Matisse and De Staël.
This monograph contains a complete catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre.

The work of Kiki Lamers, a Dutch painter who for several years has created unusually lush, carefully rendered and lovingly detailed portraits of young children, has been controversial. A realist by inclination she typically paints her subjects in the nude, giving them naturalistic poses that are comparatively revealed or obscured by the extent to which they are cropped in the picture frame. As a rule, Lamers does not depict her subjects as either eternally innocent or as preternaturally mature; what is most immediately puzzling about her approach is the degree to which she insists on seeing her subjects as people first, and children second.