Stedelijk Museum AmsterdamBesprekingen

Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 31.05.94-19.06.94

The Russian literary scholar Nikolai Khardzhiev (1903- 1996) was a friend and admirer of the modern painters of his time. He collected work by masters such as Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov, Olga Rozanova, El Lissitzky, Vasiliy Chekrygin, Mikhail Matyushin and Vladimir Tatlin, compiling an extensive collection of Russian avant-garde art beginning at the end of the 1920s. The Russian Avant-Garde provides a full overview of the unique Khardziev-Chaga collection, housed at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam since 1997.

The collection contains numerous works on paper, including gouaches, watercolours, futurist book cover designs, sketches and studies. These items deepen understanding of the work of these Russian avant-garde artists. This part of this important collection has been reproduced and written about here for the first time.

1 sheet of paper, folded in 3 (folded 26.5 × 19.6 cm) with texts by herman de vries (text from 'fragmentarische argumenten' (1968), 'programmaas' (1966), 'random objectivations' (1963) and 'in de trein ...' (1974)), a list of exhibited works, a selected bibliography + a transparent envelope (27 × 19.5 cm) with 10 rectangles in different formats (originally v72-64 a-j); both in white cover with (printed) handwritten title, name of the artist and the workunumber V72-64, A-J

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 7 Februari - 6 April 1975

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the result of a collaborative research project that also produced a comprehensive exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and an upcoming show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, ZERO brings together the work of 45 artists from the ZERO network more than 50 years after the founding of the movement.
Devoted not only to the first founding artists--Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker--nor even just to those international artists associated with the network like Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana, this volume also seeks to document the contributions of lesser-known artists such as Hermann Goepfert, Oskar Holweck and Hans Salentin. Organized by the ZERO foundation and including some 200 objects, ZERO is one of the most comprehensive resources available on this self-consciously avant-gardist international movement.

The catalog shows forty works of Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) from the period 1964-1992. Polke is one of the most well known actual German artists. He uses images from the massa media and he experiments with unknown materials and techniques. In the words of Wim Beeren: "Sigmar Polke is a free man. He moves independently throught the world of phenomena, making his own choices from the immense store of things material, the universe as one can disconsern it, history - as it describes our lot in poetry and images ,science - which underwrites the natural laws, and the mystical which seek the way to invisible forces, sometimes employing magical formulas". With texts by Peter Sloterdijk, Bice Curiger, Ursula Pia Jauch and Gary Garrels.