Jan Schoonhoven - Tapa dura

Born in Delft in 1914 and regarded as one of the most important Dutch artists of the twentieth century, Jan Schoonhoven was an active and influential player in the course of major European post-war developments in art, particularly related to monochromatic, serialized abstraction. His early abstract drawings, influenced by the work of Paul Klee, eventually evolved into spare, delicate, and often grid-based papier mâché reliefs. In the 1960s, Schoonhoven co-founded the avant-garde Nul-groep (Nul group), a Dutch branch of the international Zero movement that sought to reduce art to the zero degree by simplifying compositions and using everyday materials. This catalogue will be published in conjunction with the first significant presentation of Schoonhoven’s work in New York in many years. Serving as an important contribution to literature on the artist published in English, this extensive exhibition catalogue is anchored by richly detailed plates of the sculptural reliefs and works on paper featured in the show, all of which were made between the mid-1950s and early 1970s. During that period, Schoonhoven focused on the production of white, monochrome reliefs and black ink drawings whose integration of meticulous control and automatic gesture exemplify the artist’s ability to balance rigorous order with the expressiveness of the hand. Featuring new scholarship by Antoon Melissen, one of the foremost authorities on Schoonhoven’s work, as well as documentary photographs and an illustrated chronology, this publication offers an invaluable introduction to the work of this pioneering champion of the proto-Minimalist tendencies that sprang up in Europe and the United States in the early 1960s.

Jan Schoonhoven (1914-1994) is regarded as one of the most important Dutch artists of the late twentieth century and is recognized for his extensive and systematic investigations into light, form, and volume through his sculptural wall reliefs and works on paper.