|
This week we are happy to share with you Het Open Veld (The Open Field), a rare Dutch portfolio comprising six sheets sandwiched between two cardboard covers, bound with string. Taking the form of a horizontal scrapbook, the portfolio includes fourteen tipped-in works by eleven contributors: eight prints, two mimeographed texts, and four ex libris. The colophon describes “a portfolio of prints and manuscripts by the circle of comrades” of the Bibliophile League of Eelderwolde—a town just outside of Groningen in northern Holland. The portfolio was published in an edition of only twenty-five copies, of which ours is number nineteen. From an Expressionist style woodcut by Jan van der Zee (1898–1988) to geometric abstractions by Wobbe Alkema (1900–1984) and H. N. Werkman (1882–1945), the portfolio demonstrates the range of styles and media used by artists associated with De Ploeg (The Plow), the Groningen-based artists’ group founded in 1918. In 1923, when this portfolio was published, the group was at a turning point. Under the influence of Constructivist journals such as the Dutch De Stijl and the Belgian Het Overzicht, the earlier influence of the German Expressionist Die Brücke group was beginning to wane. In 1922, Die Ploeg hosted exhibitions of Constructivist artists Theo van Doesburg and Vilmos Huszár in Groningen. Werkman’s Expressionist journal Blad voor Kunst (Magazine for the Arts; 1921–1922) ceased publication and was followed by his remarkable journal The Next Call (1923–1926)—a veritable manifesto of abstraction in print. Werkman’s Justification appears on the second sheet of The Open Field. This brief text is printed beside a stark, ink-saturated, vertical orange bar; the bold aesthetic anticipates The Next Call. Extending the metaphor of the plough and the field, Werkman defines “the open field” as a generative site for “substantial growth,” but also for “untimely rupture” and for the presence of “weeds.” He predicts that “the times ahead will be better able to judge” the work produced in this “field”—including that presented in the portfolio.
|
