Niko Kok

The Artwork of Niko Kok

Born in the Netherlands, Niko Kok is a Dutch visual artist who works in multiple mediums. From 1973 to 1978, he studied in the sculpture department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Strongly influenced during the 1940s and 1950s by the Brauhaus and De Stijl movements, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie focuses on the artist’s individual expression and the role and influence of autonomous visual art.

Kok brings a nearly fifty-year career in the steel industry to his artwork. In 1972, he began his employment at Tata Steel IJmuiden where he had the unique opportunity to engage with a diverse range of materials. This exposure increased Kok’s creative spirt and allowed him to devise new techniques for his artwork, including the employment of graphite crucibles, formerly used to measure nitrogen levels in steel, as a tool for his rubbings on paper.

Over forty years, Niko Kok has transformed ordinary shapes and materials into visual creations by using the specific properties of his chosen material in multiple and often unusual ways. The recurring themes that underlie his aesthetic ideology are simplicity and contrast. Kok has worked with stone, paper, fabric, metal, glass, wood shards, and both steel and iron wire. He has also created rubbings and geometrically designed works with graphite and paper; his Tear Series combined different pieces of torn paper arranged in patterns with added graphite effects.

A pivotal point in Niko Kok’s artistic career occurred during his travel in 1979 to Centre Pompidou in Paris. He visited the former atelier of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, an artist whose work had emphasized clean geometrical lines and the inherent properties of the materials used. Kok is also inspired by the Minimal Art movement, an extreme form of abstract art that emerged in the late 1950s and flourished into the 1970s. Minimalism saw art as its own reality. No attempt was made to represent an outside experience or emotion; the artwork’s medium and its form was the reality.

From 1990 to 2006, Kok created a series of small sculptures using black, white and red granite. The “Double Cube”, “Column” and “Stacking” series were fashioned of either polished or unpolished granite stones fitted together to form perfectly squared sculptures of various heights. Using his knowledge of material properties, Kok has also worked with granite spheres, a shape capable of motion in every direction. Once the sphere is bisected, the two existing hemispheres each possess stability. Even after being pushed off balance, their equilibrium brings them back to rest.

Among his exhibitions, Niko Kok presented his graphic work at a 2012 exhibition at the Swiss Art Space in Lausanne, Switzerland. Hie participated in a solo exhibition at Artphy in 2019 held at Onstwedde, Netherlands. In the following year, Kok was part of a collaborative Artphy exhibition held in the same city. He currently lives and maintains a studio in the Dutch town of Heemskerk, Netherlands.

Kok’s work has been exhibited and sold through the Alfa Gallery, an artist-operated space with locations in both the Miami Design District and the Chelsea area of New York City. His website, which include images of his work and contact information, can be found at: https://nicokok.exto.org

Top and Bottom Insert Images: Nico Kok, “Self Portrait”, 1988, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Niko Kok, “Cubes and Cubes”, 2018, Plastic on Base, 96 x 96 x9.4 cm, Private Collection

Jan Toorop

The Art of Johannes (Jan) Toorop

Born in the Purworejo Regency of the southern Central Java province of the Dutch East Indies in December of 1858, Jan (Jean) Theodorus Toorop was a Dutch-Indonesian painter who influenced the development of Dutch modern art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Gifted and sensitive to new ideas, he originally was influenced by Amsterdam Impressionism and later worked in the Symbolist, Art Nouveau, and Pointillist styles.

The third of five children born to civil servant Christoffel Theodorus Toorop and Maria Magdalena Cooke, Johannes “Jan” Toorop lived on the island of Bangka, an important mining center in Asia, until he was nine years old. He received his initial education in the city of Batavia, now Jakarta, on the island of Java. In 1869, Toorop traveled to the Netherlands where he continued his education in Delft and Amsterdam. Beginning in 1880, he entered a two-year course of art education with studies under Impressionist painter August Allebé at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie, home to the Amsterdam Impressionist movement.

In 1883, Toorop enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and became an active member of the avant-garde with travels to Paris and London. He remained in Brussels until 1886, during which time he befriended and shared a studio with Belgian painter William Degouve de Nuncques who became known for his symbolist nocturnal landscapes. In 1883, Toorop joined L’Ensor, an association of artists opposed to conservative tendencies in art. In the following year, he became a member of Les XX (Les Vingts), the successor group to L’Ensor that centered its theories on the integration of decorative and major arts.

In 1884, Jan Toorop exhibited his work with the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in Paris; his first solo exhibition was held in Paris in 1885. He traveled on several occasions to England where he became acquainted with the Pre-Raphaelites and such artists as James Whistler and William Morris. During the mid-1880s, Toorop created work in a variety of styles including Realism, Impressionism, and both Neo and Post-Impressionism.

After his marriage in 1886 to Annie Hall, the daughter of a wealthy, landed English family and a student of music and the French language, Toorop divided his painting between lodgings in England, Brussels, The Hague, and later the Dutch seaside resort town of Katwijk aan Zee. It was in this period that he developed his own personal style of Symbolism: curvilinear designs with stylized gracile figures and dynamic lines based on motifs from the Javanese culture. In 1892, Toorop exhibited these works at the Salon de la Rose + Croix in Paris and at The Hague’s Circle for the Arts, of which he was a founding member.

Jan Toorop became influenced in the mid 1890s by the Art Nouveau movement, known in the Netherlands as Noul Stil (New Style) or Nieuwe Kunst (New Art), and created several commercial poster and advertisement designs in this style. After exhibitions in Copenhagen, Dresden and Munich in 1898. he began an extended period of residence at a small marketplace house located in the seaside town of Domburg situated on the northwest coast of the Dutch province of Zeeland. Among Toorop’s many associates at Domburg were such artists as Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of the De Stijl art movement, and Dutch seascape painter Marinus Zwart.

Toorop converted to Roman Catholicism in 1905 and shortly afterward changed his name to Johannes and divorced his wife. In addition to his book illustrations and poster works, he began to produce religious works, including stained glass designs in a more geometrical linear style. After several years of residence at the Dutch city of Nijmegen, Toorop relocated in 1916 to The Hague. Beginning in 1917, he suffered from a partial paralysis that increasingly affected his later production, a series of works inspired by both religion and mysticism.

Considered to be the most avant-garde artist in the Netherlands at the turn of the twentieth-century, Johannes (Jan) Toorop died at the age of sixty-nine in The Hague at the beginning of March in 1928. His works are in many private collections and such public collections as the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterio and the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, both in the Netherlands.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jan Toorop”, circa 1920-1923, Vintage Photograph, Getty Images

Second Insert Image: Jan Toorop, “Delftsche Sloalie”, 1894, Lithograph, Illustration for Delft Salad Oil Advertisement, Limegreen and Black over Pink Ink on Paper, 86 x 56 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Jan Toorop, “Madonna and Child”, 1924, Pencil and Colored Crayons on Paper, 26.5 x 21 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Jan Toorop, “Self Portrait”, 1915, Black Chalk on Paper, 23.3 x 20 cm, Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Bernard Picart

Bernard Picart, “The Fall of Icarus”, 1730-1731, Etching, From “Metamorphosis of Ovid”, Published 1733, 23 x 17.7 cm, Museum of Fine Art Boston

Born in Paris in June of 1673, Bernard Picart was a prolific French engraver, draftsman and book illustrator. He was the son of Étienne Picart, a noted engraver that trained under the highly skilled Académie engraver Gilles Rousselet.

In 1689, Bernard Picart entered the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, the premier art institution in France where he studied drawing and architecture. He trained under painter and theorist Charles le Brun, perspective teacher Sébastien Leclerc, and painter Antoine Coypel, the director of the Académie Royale. After graduating, Picart spent the winter of 1696 in Antwerp, Belgium where his work was well received.

Picart resided from September of 1696 to December of 1698 in the Netherlands where he fulfilled commissions for his work. In 1698 upon his return to Paris, he began the management of his father’s printing workshop and became both a playwright and an editor for his work and the work of members from the Dutch Nil Volentibus Ardum literary society. In 1702, Picart married Cloudina Pros, the daughter of a local bookseller, who gave birth to four children. Tragedy, however, struck the family; Cloudina Picart and all four children were deceased by 1709.

Bernard Picart and his family were Huguenots, French Protestants who followed the teachings of theologian John Calvin. Persecuted by the government after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes that guaranteed the rights of French Protestants, many Huguenots fled France; this included Picart and his elderly father. In January of 1710, they fled for Holland where they settled in The Hague with their friend, Fremch bibliographer Prosper Marchand. After accepting a commission to draw prints for an edition of the Bible, Picart and Marchand relocated to Amsterdam in 1711 and were joined later by Picart’s father.

In April of 1712, Picart married Anna Vincent, the daughter of wealthy Haarlem paper supplier Ysbrand Vincent. Bernard and Anna Picart had twin sons, both of whom died within a few weeks, and three daughters who survived. Anna Picart became her husband’s agent in sales, known for the high prices she charged as well as her determination to hold all Picart’s original illustrations after their printing. In 1718, Picart collaborated with Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruyn on the frontispiece for “Voyages de Corneille le Brun par in Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Occidentales”, a illustrated travelogue by de Bruyn. In the same year, he opened an engraving school in Amsterdam with such students as Pieter Tanjé, Jakob van der Schely, and François Morellon la Cave.

In 1724, Bernard Picart created seventy engravings that depicted carved gemstones for a collaboration with Prussian antiquarian Philipp von Stosch. The published “Gemmæ Antiquæ Cælatæ” is today considered by historians to be a classic work. Picart’s most famous work is his twenty-year collaboration with author and publisher Jean Frédéric Bernard, the ten-volume “Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde”. Picart created two hundred sixty-six engravings for this collection; the first volume was published in 1727. He also collaborated from 1728 to 1739 with academic painter Louis Fabricius Dubourg on prints of medallions and monuments for an edition authored by former Prussian ambassador to England, Baron Freiherr von Spanheim.

The majority of Picart’s work was book illustrations which he produced in collaboration with local artists. These illustrations were used in various publications including the 1720 “Figures de la Bible” and the 1728 “Taferelen der Voornaamste Geschiedenissen van het Oude en Nieuwe Testament”, a pictorial bible of Old and New Testaments that contained two hundred-fourteen large, engraved biblical scenes. Picart was also one of several artists selected to produce engravings for a 1733 Dutch edition of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, which was later reprinted in both English and French editions.

Bernard Picart died in Amsterdam in May of 1733 survived by his wife and three daughters. His wife, Anna Vincent Picart, ordered her daughters to keep Picart’s collection of drawings together but allowed them to sell prints and the copper plates at auction. A catalogue of Picart’s work, “Impostures Innocents”, was published posthumously in 1735 with a discourse on engraving written by Picart and a biography of his life written by Anna Picart. Contained with the boxed volume was a list of his work compiled faithfully over the years by Anna Picart. More than two thousand works by Bernard Picart are available online from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. In addition to the many private collections, a substantial number of works by Picart are housed in Haarlem’s Teylers Museum.

Top Insert Image: Nicolass Verkolje, “Bernard Picart”, 1715, Mezzotint, 33 x 24 cm, The British Museum, London

Second Insert Image: Bernard Picart, “Charles, King of Sweden on Horseback”, Date Unknown, Etching on Paper, 31.3 x 20.6 cm, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

Third Insert Image: Bernard Picart, “Allegory of Time”, 1690-1733, Engraving on Paper, 39 x 27 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Bottom Insert Image: Bernard Picart, Academic Drawing and Engraving, “Impostures Innocents” Collection, Published 1735, Private Collection,

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh, “The Sower (After Millet)”, 1881, Pencil, Pen and Brush and Ink, Watercolor on Paper, Van Gough Museum, Amsterdam

“The Sower” was a subject that Vincent van Gogh keep coming back many times in his career. Peasant imagery was of great importance to Van Gogh, who began his career by copying prints of Millet, Corot and other members of the Barbizon School. Van Gogh was a particular admirer of French artist Jean-François Millet, recognizing him as a leading artist.

Although Van Gogh was born into a middle-class family, he came from the small town of Nuenen where agriculture and therefore hard labor was a prevalent industry. Van Gogh later worked in other areas of great poverty. He developed a strong sympathy and respect for the peasants that he saw, and was socialist in his opinions and outlook. Van Gogh’s depictions of peasants remained similar in concept to those of Millet, in that he gave his figures an eternalizing spirit that emphasized their long history rather than using his paintings to advocate change.

Kenne Grégoire

The Paintings of Kenne Grégoire

Kenne Grégoire,a painter often associated with the movement New Dutch Realism, moves between still-life paintings and more surreal scenes that capture a humane sadness and other complex emotions, rendered in acrylics. The artist uses techniques derived from the 17th century, yet he approaches his work in a way that pushes the form, twisting perspective and hues to create ambiguous points of view and situations.

”In all his compositions one can find decay and beauty. The objects in the still lives are never new. They are damaged, dented and rusty because they have been used and have had a life on their own.”- Galerie Mokum, Amsterdam

Canal Boats

Small Houses: Canal boat in Amsterdam

The Charlotte Johanna first set sail in 1908, transporting freight along the inland waterways connecting Western Europe. A little over a century later, it was converted into a floating home and is now moored on the Prinsengracht canal in central Amsterdam.

A canalside gangplank leads to the main entry into the boat’s wheelhouse, which is used as a lounge. From there, a steep stair descends into what was once the cargo hold but is now a comfortable living space. The original cargo hold doors were replaced with skylights, making the below-deck space surprisingly sunny and helping to counteract the low ceiling.

What does it cost to live aboard a barge in Amsterdam? According to one source, moorage in Amsterdam runs about EUR 200 monthly. Annual maintenance can cost anywhere from EUR 1,000 to 3,000. That doesn’t include a haul out every few years to have the hull cleaned of rust and repainted, which will set you back about EUR 2,000–3,000. While the boat is in dry dock, a marine surveyor can inspect the hull for soundness, giving you peace of mind at a cost of up to EUR 700. So not including your electric bill and any mortgage payment, you’re probably looking at around EUR 350-550 monthly.

Maurice Heerdink

Paintings and Drawings by Maurice Heerdink

Born in 1955 in The Hague, Maurice Heerdink is a Dutch painter known mostly for his subtle painted photo-realistic male nude art. After graduating in 1981 from the Royal Art Academy in The Hague, The Netherlands, he traveled extensively through north and middle America. Heerdink illustrated books and magazines from 1989 to 2000, writing and publishing short stories of his own.

Heerdink developed a modern Caravaggio-style during the 1990s, emphasizing drama and lighting in his paintings. Focusing on mythology, he painted a series of figurative scenes, receiving a first prixe in 1999 at the “The Jesus Mystery” exhibition for his painting “The Return of the New Messiah”. A documentary of his life and art, “The Playful Eroticism of Maurice Heerdink” was shown on MVS Gay TV Amsterdam in 1998.