1.- WALTER DARBY BANNARD (American, 1934- 2016)
Whippet, 1986, acrylic on canvas
CRP212
Born in New Haven, Connecticut (USA). After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, he studied philosophy at Princeton University. He befriended the artist Frank Stella, who, like him, was interested in abstract minimalism. In 1964 Clement Greenberg included him in the historic Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and, in 1965, in The Responsive Eye at MoMA. That same year, he held one of his first solo exhibitions at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery (New York). In 1968 he received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Associated with colour field painting, his style evolved from a minimalist design stylein his early years, such as a single strip painted around a colour field, to somewhat more complex geometric compositions. As an art critic and theorist, he wrote for publications such as Art in America and Art International. In 1989 he became head of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami. In the later stage of his life, interest in his work was revived. The Berry Campbell Gallery in New York regularly holds exhibitions that review and value his career. In the year of his death, his work was importantly featured in the exhibition Painting After Postmodernism, curated by Barbara Rose, at the Vanderborght (Brussels), the Palacio Episcopal (Málaga) and the Reggia di Caserta. His work is also represented in the permanent collections of, among many other institutional collections, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou (Paris), and the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia).
2.- WLADIMIR MOSZOWSKI (Belgian, 1949)
Circle (díptico), 2015, óleo y acrílico sobre lienzo
CRP 369
Born in Genk (Belgium). His work has a marked autobiographical character. Born in Belgium to a Ukrainian father, Moszowski experienced the paradox of being a Belgian with a Ukrainian surname, an identity crisis that led him into a cultural conflict. These experiences have led him to create a parallel world. Through therapy and work with the subconscious, the artist gained access to his “Void”: the loss of identity transformed into the “Sublime Void”, a place where a staging of identity, history, and fantasy could take place. His paintings create that parallel world, in which he can take on whatever role and form he wants, change his identity, gender or age, represent situations from the past, reshape them and create new ones. The search for identity is over; his “Sublime Void” is his identity. His art is a private ritual to protect personal and cultural duality. The ancient wisdom of alchemy thus constitutes his guiding principle in art. His search for his identity and his place as a human being take the form of a complex project of total art, of a personal mythology; alchemical terms such as separatio and coniunctio (separation and union of elements to arrive at a fundamental entity) are translated conceptually and expressively by the artist in texts, drawings, and spatial installations. In addition to many group exhibitions starting in 1972 (Belgium, Germany, Russia, Poland, USA, etc.), since 1979 Moszowski has held numerous solo exhibitions in Belgian and Dutch galleries and cultural centres, and carried out four art projects in public spaces between 1993 and 2001.
3.- KAREL DIERICKX (Belgian, 1940- 2014)
Still-Life, 2013, oil on canvas
CRP248
He was born in Ghent and studied at the Rijksnormaalschool there under Octave Landuyt. In 1962 he was awarded the Belgian Young Painter Prize and in 1963 the Godecharle Foundation Prize. Always attentive to the Flemish tradition, his work exists between figurative and abstract: landscapes, still lifes and portraits. In 1984 the artist represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale. From 1995 onwards, he collaborated with the German gallery Hachmeister, and attended important international fairs (Cologne, Basel). Dierickx was a guest lecturer at the Kanazawa School of Art (Japan) and a member of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten. From the 1970s until his retirement in 1999, he taught at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Gent (Wim Delvoye, Yves Beaumont, Marc Maet and Philipp Vandenberg were his students). In 1985 he exhibited at the International Cultural Centre in Antwerp and in 1988 at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent), as well as at the Hachmeister, Lelong and Arteba galleries (Zurich), and the Roberto Polo Gallery (Brussels). Ergo Pers published Leonard Nolens’ Negen schlaploze gedichten (Nine Sleepless Poems) with five etchings by Dierickx in 2006, and Giotto’s himel (Giotto’sSky) in 2012, a book of poems by Stefan Hertmans with engravings done by the artist. In 2014 after his death, a tribute exhibition was organised at the Roger Raveel Museum (Mechelen). His work can be found at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (Brussels), the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent) and the LWL (Münster).
4.- KAREL DIERICKX (belga/ Belgian, 1940- 2014)
Rien ne bouge, 2013, oil on canvas
CRP 247
5.- KAREL DIERICKX (belga/ Belgian, 1940- 2014)
Spiegel van licht, 1991, oil on canvas
CRP242
6.- MARTHE DONAS (Belgian, 1885- 1967)
Mère et enfant, 1919, plaster
CRP070
Born in Antwerp. To avoid her gender influencing people’s perception of her art, she signed works as Tour d’Onasky or Tour Donas, following the suggestion of her friend Theo van Doesburg. According to Katherine Dreier, founder of the legendary Société Anonyme, she was “Belgium’s first abstract painter”. Donas was educated at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Antwerp); in 1916 she studied stained-glass making in Ireland. André Lothe’s exhibition in Paris introduced her to Cubism. Her first fully abstract and Post-Cubist works date from 1917. Donas was also a precursor of Surrealism. In 1918 the artist joined the famous Section D’Or in Paris, which was inspired by Cubism and Orphism. Donas’ greatest contribution to modern art is to have been the first person to push Cubism into abstraction. In 1919, Van Doesburgh published several articles on her in De Stijl, placing her among the protagonists of modern art. In 1920 she exhibited in Der Sturm, Herwarth Walden’s gallery and Berlin’s avant-garde centre; all her works were bought by Walden and Katherine Dreier, who, advised by Marcel Duchamp, gathered an impressive collection of masterpieces of the international avant-garde, the core of the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven) and MoMA (New York). Donas exhibited again at Der Sturm in 1923. The Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) presented a retrospective of her in 1960. Her productions have been shown at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten (Ghent), the Von der Heydt (Wuppertal), the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (Brussels and Antwerp), and Tate Modern (London). In cooperation with the Yale University Art Gallery and the Archipenko Foundation of Bearsville (New York), the Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Ghent) presented a major exhibition of her work in 2016.