Primal Scream 

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“How do you create a work of art?”

So asks the article 10 Contemporary Artists Talk About Their Creative Process, from Park West Gallery.  The article then continues with,

 “That sounds like a straightforward question, but it has millions of potential answers. Every artist in the world has their own unique way they approach a blank canvas. Some come prepared with sketches and outlines. Others wait for a spark of inspiration until the last minute. They’re all performing similar actions—painting, drawing, etching, sculpting—but it’s the subtle variations in how they perform each one that really defines them as an artist.”

This post is the first in a series, in which other contemporary artists will talk about the creative process that enables them to “create a work of art”. And, as is only appropriate, this first post is from the modern Dutch artist Siegfried Wolfgang Päschke, whose artistic legacy is exhibited in the MappaArt galleries. 

The Early Years

Wolf was born in Krefeld and raised in Kleve, in Germany, close to the Dutch border. In the early seventies, Wolf moved to Nijmegen in the Netherlands. In 1976 he enrolled in the nearby Academy of Arts in Arnhem,  now part of ArtEZ, to study painting, drawing, photography, and graphic art. On graduating in 1981, he settled in Nijmegen to begin his life as an artist. Apart from his travels to Saba (1982), South East Asia (1992),  and South America (2002), he lived and worked in Nijmegen until his death in 2003. 

Contemporary Artists Creative - Wolf on Saba

Wolf on Saba in the Netherlands Antilles

The Prolific Years

Although Wolf died in 2003, he left extensive records.  From these records, we know that for extended periods of his life, especially during his travels, Wolf produced a painting or drawing per day. In these images, he fused the daily scenes around him with his memories, dreams, and musings on the future. Wolf called this stage of actually committing an image to paper, the Primal Scream of the work. The resulting multiple journals of Primal Screams, produced in the years between 1982 and 2003, he called his Drawn Diary.

Contemporary Artists Creative - Drawn Diary

Wolf’s 21 journals with about 30 drawings per book.
The first book begins on June 13, 1994, and the final book ends in 2000

Later, Wolf then used selected images from this Drawn Diary, to create further works of art, including monoprints and larger paintings. Fortunately, among the records Wolf left us, was the following video. So, I leave it to wolf himself to explain the methods and processes he used to produce his art, in his own words, in three languages. 

 

groene speelplaats

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Wolf Päschke (1951-2003)

Siegfried Wolfgang Päschke werd geboren in Krefeld (D), groeide op in Kleef(D) en woonde meer dan 20 jaar in Nijmegen (NL). In 1981 studeerde hij af aan de Hoge School voor de Kunsten te Arnhem in de vakken schilderen, tekenen, fotografie en grafiek.

Hij noemde zichzelf graag een ontdekkingsreiziger in de kunst. Reizend door verre landen deed hij de nodige inspiratie op, die hij vervolgens combineerde met het leven in Nederland hetgeen soms verrassende beelden opleverde.

Contemporary Artists Creative - Wolf on Saba

Wolf on Saba in the Netherlands Antilles

De laatste jaren maakte hij dagelijks tekeningen die als een getekend dagboek beelden laten zien van hetgeen de kunstenaar om zich heen zag gebeuren, vermengd met herinneringen en ideeën over de toekomst. Hij tekende en schilderde zonder reserves. Door de directe, openhartige werkwijze leidde dat tot mooie, lelijke, brutale of ook evenwichtige resultaten.

Hij zei weleens: “Wat de dag brengt, wordt tot uitdrukking gebracht in de tekening”. Zijn werk kan geschaard worden onder de categorie Nederlandse moderne kunst.

De prijs is bespreekbaar

Contactgegevens:  Loes Jansen, zie www.MappaArt.org

The grapes of February 2021

The grapes of February 2021 – all the latest news and views on classical & contemporary art and artists from MappaArt’s global art grapevine.

8 Female Surrealists Who Are Not Frida Kahlo—from Meret Oppenheim to Dorothea Tanning

Source:artsy.net 

“Mexican artist and cultural icon Frida Kahlo is arguably the world’s most famous female Surrealist, but women across the globe have long employed art to plumb the depths of dreams and the unconscious. As art historian Whitney Chadwick notes in LACMA’s catalogue In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, the companion to the museum’s 2012 exhibition, “Surrealism’s legacy included a model for creative practices that encouraged many women to adapt its principles in their search to link artistic self-identity to the realities of gender and female sexuality.”

Surreal artist Helen Lundeberg

“Biological Fantasy”, 1946, by Helen Lundeberg, © The Feitelson / Lundeberg Art Foundation, courtesy of Louis Stern Fine Arts.

Mosaics

Source: europeana

“Throughout history, mosaic art has been an expression of aesthetics, spirituality and luxury. Here are inspirational Greek, Roman and Christian mosaics that have brought art and color to the walls and floors of palaces, theatres, churches, public buildings, villas and baths.”

Classical art Mosaic depicting Raphaël

Mosaic depicting Raphaël, [Public domain] via europeana

Ed Benguiat: Stranger Things, Esquire and the 600 Creations of a Unique Typographer

Source: Domestika

“A retrospective on the prolific typographer and logo designer, featuring some of his most emblematic creations

“Ed Benguiat (1924-2020) was an American typographer, designer, and lettering artist whose influence on the creative world is difficult to overstate. In addition to having served as associate director of Esquire magazine—whose logo he designed, he was a prestigious jazz percussionist under the name Eddie Benart, a pilot, a teacher with more than 50 years of experience, and, every now and then, he found the time to retouch some “scandalous” images in magazines.”

Classical Typography

Fat Stuff design, Ed Benguiat, School of Visual Arts Archive via Domestika

Study Finds Artists Become Famous through Their Friends, Not the Originality of Their Work

Source: artsy.net

“Ingram and his colleague Mitali Banerjee, of HEC Paris, used MoMA’s findings to examine the role that creativity and social networks played for these artists, in relationship to the level of fame they achieved. In a 2018 paper, they relayed their findings—including that for successful artists, making friends may be more important than producing novel art.”

Peer network of artists

Peer network of the artists in “Inventing Abstraction, Courtesy of Paul Ingram and Mitali Banerjee via artsy.net

I Heard it through the Grapevine

I heard it through the grapevine. Welcome to the latest news about classical & contemporary art and artists from MappaArt’s global art grapevine.

Art exhibit honouring missing and murdered Indigenous people opens in Bozeman

Source: Nora Mabie | Great Falls Tribune

“We Are Still Here and This is Our Story,” a group exhibit that honours and advocates for missing and murdered Indigenous people, opened on Friday at the Emerson Center for the Arts and Culture in Bozeman, Montana, USA.

The exhibit, which features contemporary art, beadwork and fashion design from 11 Native women artists, will be open through Feb. 28. Ten of the featured artists are women from Montana.

contemporary art - Indigenous Hillshade

“Indigenous Hillshade,” 24 x 36 in., Acrylic on canvas, 2020, by Salisha Old Bull via Facebook

The Scottish Sisters Who Pioneered Art Nouveau

Source: JStore Daily

Margaret and Frances Macdonald and their Glasgow School of Art classmates, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Harold MacNair, were Art Nouveau’s Glasgow Four.

Art nouveau - Spring

Spring, by Frances MacDonald (c. 1900-1905) via Wikimedia Commons

The Rijksmuseum Has Made 709,000 Artworks Available for Free Online

Source: MyModernMet

The Rijksmuseum’s online collections known as Rijks Studio are easily searchable by artist, object type, period, and place. Users will encounter magnificent 17th-century portraits by Frans Hals, realistic still life paintings, and ornate furniture, including one opulent dollhouse in a cabinet. If you start searching the collections, you are sure to find art and artists you never knew existed.

classical art - The Little House

View of Houses in Delft, Known as ‘The Little Street’, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1658. (Photo: Rijksmuseum [Public domain])

An Origami Samurai Made from a Single Sheet of Rice Paper

Source: Twistedsifter

Origami artist Juho Könkkölä spent 50 hours folding an origami samurai from a single square sheet of paper, with no cutting or ripping used in the process.

I Heard it through the Grapevine - Origami Samurai

Origami Samurai, by Juho Könkkölä via twistedsifter

Rarely-Seen Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Are Now Free Online, Courtesy of the Uffizi Gallery

Source: Mymodernet 

Illustrated editions of Dante’s poem began appearing in 1472, and the first fully illustrated edition in 1491. By the late 16th century, the poem had become a literary classic (the word Divine joined Comedy in the title in 1555). By this time, the tradition of depicting a literal, rather than a literary, hell was firmly established.

classical art - Dantes Inferno

Frederico Zucarri’s Illustration of Canto I from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ (Photo: Helvio ricinaCC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Quest for his Holy Grail

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Contemporary artist Henk van der Gronde talks about the Quest for his Holy Grail

HenkHenk van der Gronde
Burgemeester Keestrasingel 25
4101 ZB, Culemborg
Telephone: 0345-520284
Mobile: 06-51490994
Email: hvdgronde@gmail.com
Atelier: ‘t Jach 32 , 4101 CM Culemborg
Website: http://henkvandergronde.nl

 

The beginning

On completing my studies in graphic design at the art academy in Arnhem (now ArtEZ),  I  spent some time studying the paintings, and philosophy of art, of René Klinkers and Hans Koopman at the Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten (HKU) in Utrecht.  During my artistic career, I have held various exhibitions, both individually and in groups with artists associations. Much of my exhibited work is now in private collections or owned by companies.

landschap met rode toren

Landschap met rode toren
Landscape with red tower

het hoge water huis 2d-3d

Het hoge water huis 2d-3d
The high water house 2D-3D

Insect

Insect
Insect

My working style

Most of my art is created intuitively, born from random moments captured by my eye, mixed with my mood, memories, and impressions. I work mostly in oil paints, which allows me to work longer on the painting but, of course, also requires a longer drying time. 

My work begins when I enter into a continuous dialogue with a selected canvas; asking with my eyes and responding with my strokes of colour. I work by applying layers of paint on top of each other on the canvas, like skin.  Then, with my fingernails or stylus, I make scratches in the skin and combine them with India ink to produce drawing-like effects to the work.

stadt op rots

Stadt op rots
City on rock

Stad met volle maan en vissen

Stad met volle maan en vissen
City with full moon & fishes

Vissen

Vissen
Fish

To give chance a chance, I like to surprise myself sometimes by turning the canvas while painting the picture. For me, spontaneity and immediacy give the canvas more character.

Painting is always a Quest for me. I am constantly searching for my Holy Grail.

MappaArt Mini-exhibition

October 2020 to March 2021

The MappaArt mini-exhibition in Nijmegen displays four paintings for sale from the modern Dutch artist Siegfried Wolfgang Päschke.

IJssalon Ghiani
Van Het Sant-straat 145
6523 BE Nijmegen

By bus stop line 8, direction Berg en Dal

Gianis Ijssalon - MappaArt Mini-exhibition

De vrolijke Held - MappaArt Mini-exhibitionDe vrolijke held – 1997
 
CrazyWagonXXI - MappaArt Mini-exhibitionCrazy Wagon XXI –  1999
Form and colour VIII - MappaArt Mini-exhibitionForm and colour VIII – 1996
 
CrazyWagonXXII - MappaArt Mini-exhibitionCrazy Wagon XXII – 1999
 
4 works of 70cm X 50cm. 250 euro per piece, including the frame.