Collector Bert Kreuk has won his lawsuit with Danh Vo, forcing the artist the create a room-sized installation work, after the artist delivered a much smaller-sized work. Kreuk will pay the artist $350,000 for the piece, but Vo must deliver the piece by a set date. If not, will be fined $10,000 for each day after he fails to produce the work. (more…)
Claude Monet’s L’Embarcadère will hit the auction block next week during Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and Modern works next week in London. The “museum-quality” work featuring the landscapes of Zaandam in the Netherlands, is estimated to sell for between £7,500,000 and £10,000,000. “Monet captures the Dutchness, not merely externally…but also the delicate enveloping light and atmosphere, subtly different from the Ile de France,” writes art historian Ronald Pickvance. “The superb manner in which he registers the immense and often changing Dutch skies is sufficient proof of this.” (more…)
The New York Times profiles a new effort underway in the Netherlands to encourage public arts patronage through a subscription-based service. The program, titled We Are Public, offers low-price access to a range of cultural events, while promising to contribute €18,000 to local arts institutions. “There’s a tendency on all levels of society that people want to take more control over what’s going on, and people are collectively funding stuff they think is important,” says co-founder Bas Morsch. (more…)
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray and Blue (1921), Collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. © 2014 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c:o HCR International
“I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects,” Piet Mondrian’s quote reads in the introduction to his expansive retrospective at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. The Dutch artist, who moved slowly but steadily through the early history of abstraction, explored a diverse body of work in his career, from early impressionist experiments through to his iconic grids, colorful, reductive patterns of black lines and squares of color. (more…)
Fourteen monumental sculptures by Alexander Calder are going on view this summer at the Rijksmuseum’s outdoor gallery in Amsterdam. The works will be on view during normal museum hours, and accompany an exhibition of works from the collection of the Calder Foundation and Musée National d’Art Moderne and Centre Pompidou, among others, (more…)
Recently appointed Stedelijk Museum director Beatrix Ruf is interviewed in The Art Newspaper this week, discussing her vision for the museum, her previous work at Kunsthalle Zurich, and what she thinks arts institutions should be focusing on in the 21st Century. “The big general question for us all is how museums should be made to function,” she says. “We are all looking into the meanings of heritage and the interplay between the caretaking of heritage and how to develop collecting further.” (more…)
An Alexander Calder sculpture previous installed at Gramercy Park in New York has been installed in Maastricht for this year’s edition of TEFAF Maastricht. The installation was organized by dealer Christophe van der Weghe, and is for sale for about $20 million. (more…)
The thieves behind last year’s audacious heist of works from the Kunsthal Rotterdam have been sentenced to six years in prison for their thefts, which included works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin, and which held a total value of over $24 million. The 2012 theft has yet to see the paintings recovered, and officials say that some of the works have been destroyed. (more…)
A recent investigation into the collection of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has uncovered 139 works looted during World War II. The results of a 4-year study, the works have been placed on a website, inviting prior owners to make claims on the return of the work, including pieces by Matisse and Isaac Israels. “We know that there were doubtful transactions concerning works acquired before 1940, after Kristallnacht,” said Siebe Weide of the Dutch Museum Association. (more…)
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has announced a new line of three-dimensional replicas of some of the artist’s most famous works. Recreated down to the frame, the replicas are available for £22,000. “This particular process has been developed with paintings in mind. The work of Van Gogh lends itself particularly well, since the pictures are so rich in surface structure. We have been working with them on the color quality and fine-tuning.” Says Museum Director Axel Rüger. (more…)
As the trial for the suspects in the 2012 theft from the Kunsthal Rotterdam looks to begin, Romanian director Tudor Giurgiu has begun work on a feature film about the suspected thieves, an action adventure that documents their rise to art world infamy. “The subject sells itself, it is an excellent pretext for an action movie.” Giurgiu said. (more…)
The suspects currently on trial for the theft of seven paintings from a Rotterdam Museum have pledged to return five of the works if their trial is moved from Romania to the Netherlands, the BBC reports. Including works by Monet and Picasso, the total value of the works has been estimated at €18 million, and were feared destroyed by the mother of one of the thieves. “It is more likely the paintings are intact. My client says they can be handed over to the Dutch authorities. In exchange, they want to go on trial in the Netherlands.” Said lawyer Maria Varsii. (more…)
Fearing for her son, the suspect in the theft of seven paintings by Picasso, Monet and more from a Dutch Museum, a Romanian woman has come forth saying that she has burned the paintings in her stove. Olga Dogaru, the mother of suspect Rodu Dogaru, had buried the works when her son was arrested, and finally destroyed them in February. Investigators are analyzing the contents of her stove to check for evidence of the works, which were worth tens of millions of dollars. (more…)
Noted Max Ernst scholar Werner Spies has been ordered to pay half of the €652,883 owed to collector Louis Reijtenbagh for the purchase of a falsely attributed work. This is not the first time Spies has had issues over his authentication; he was fooled by noted forger Wolfgang Beltracchi in 2011 over several works he authenticated as Ernsts. (more…)
With its 10-year, $500 million renovation now drawn to a close, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is set to reopen on April 13th. The new design, which undid years of renovations to restore the original design and layout by Pierre Cuypers, was well over both budget and timeframe, but has already received praise for its new design and attention to historical detail. “This was built as a national museum, not just an art museum, and we want the public to get a sense of history, seeing the paintings, furniture and applied arts that were all conceived around the same time.” Said Director of Collections, Taco Dibbits. (more…)
The Dutch Restitutions Committee has rejected the claim of two Jewish art dealers for all but one of 189 works in the country’s national collection. The committee did return one work, Ferdinand Bol’s Man With High Cap, but was unable to find enough evidence to return any of the other contested works. “Ownership of most of the works has not proved very probable,” the Dutch Restitutions Committee said in its recommendation, published late yesterday on its website. “During the occupation, the Katz brothers often acted as middlemen and intermediaries for German buyers.” (more…)
Romanian authorities have arrested three men suspected of the theft of seven paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gaugin, and others from a Rotterdam museum. The paintings were stolen last October in an overnight break-in. While the works have yet to be recovered, police believe that they are hidden in an undisclosed location in Romania. (more…)
