NOTE:  The following article was published in the Dutch newspaper PZC on February 9, 2005 and has been translated for Janice Mason Art Museum by Trigg County resident Johan Westenburg.  Many thanks to Mr. Westenburg, because of his efforts Janice Mason Art Museum is privileged to mount this exhibit.

To view the original newspaper article and accompanying photos click here.
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www.pzc.nl

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2005

By: Rolf Bosboom
(Translated by: Johan Westenburg)
 

It is thanks to the efforts of Efraim Milikowski, the Dutch artist and art historian, that the life's work of Flip Schrameijer has been rescued from the ranks of forgotten artists. Milikowski manages Schrameijer's studio collection and has recently completed a thorough documentation of the artist's life and work. While the efforts to create a retrospective for the artist during his lifetime received enthusiastic support in the city of Domburg, directors of provincial subsidies in the Zeeland province of the Netherlands created an uphill battle for the planned exposition.

Milikowski's interest in the artist has a long history.  After the Second World War, Schrameijer and Milikowski's parents were neighbors in Amsterdam. As a child, Milikowski was a frequent guest in the artist's house during live model sessions.  Throughout the years, there was frequent contact as both men moved through the phases of their respective careers.  This relationship intensified in 2002 when Milikowski curated an exhibit - THE COLOUR OF REALITY - of the Dutch social realist, Riek de Raat, at the Labour Union Museum in Amsterdam. With the success of this exhibition, the resolution was made to do something similar for Schrameijer.  "The work deserves it," says Milikowski.

Schrameijer’s peripheral status within the ranks of Dutch Contemporary Art is, according to Milikowski, the fault of the artist himself.   "He never made an effort to pursue fame.  He just worked on his art and ignored the business and publicity aspects that make a career.  That seems like nonchalance or disdain, but that is not accurate.  It just didn't occupy his mind.” It is, therefore, noteworthy that the artist rarely signed or dated his work creating a huge challenge for the art historian dedicated to creating proper documentation.

Wilhelmus Johannes Hendricus Schrameijer was born in Amsterdam in 1919 to a working class household that would ultimately number ten children. Inherent tensions in such an environment pushed young Filip out of doors to paint and draw the open fields and waterways.  In September of 1940, a German bomber crashed into the family home on the outskirts of Amsterdam.  Filip's mother, three sisters and two brothers died in the tragedy.  The shock of losing half his family created lifelong scars and battles with depression.

In 1942, the artist was briefly married to the fashion model Catherina Graus.  A short time later he married the actress and television director Carrie Rens.  They had two children [trans. note - including the designer Machteld Schrameijer].  Since Carrie's mother lived in the city of Vlissingen, the fishing port of the southern Netherlands, it was during this period that the artist shifted to the coastal depictions that came to dominate his visual life.

In 1956, Schrameijer married the ceramist Eila Loudon and settled in the well-heeled community of Bussum.  He started a second family that gave him three daughters and starting in 1960, drawn by the spectacular light of the Dutch coast, the family frequently retreated to the southern province of Zeeuws Vlaanderen.  During those years, the family maintained a summer house in a converted artillery bunker on the beach until, in 1968, they found a small labourer's cottage built into the wall of a dike.  Eila died in 1982 and Schrameijer returned to Amsterdam for the next decade, returning to his beloved cottage permanently in 1991.

In the years following the Second World War, Schrameijer continued his artistic training under the tutelage of G.V.A. Roling.  Throughout his career, he supplemented his income by teaching art and was appointed docent at the Free Academy in Laren in 1973.  From the early nineties to 2003 the artist frequently took part in model sessions at the art academy in Eeklo, Belgium.  In 1997, that Flemish city awarded the artist the Laureate [trans. note - a similar distinction in the U.S. would be receiving the keys to the city or a proclamation from the mayor].

RESTLESSNESS

In the monograph on Schrameijer, the English art historian Brian Dutley Barrett, perceives the artist as a restless spirit; as someone who is constantly seeking out new and different environments where he consistently discovers awe and wonder, places that goad and challenge his perception. The water is always present but the challenge for the artist is to capture his own perception of reality at that precise place and time and to convey its essence to the viewer.   To succeed, Schrameijer constantly experiments with multiple techniques.  His lifelong tendency toward thorough immersion in one subject or technique makes it possible to see specific periods of his development, such as the Gooi period which provides the bulk of family portraits.  In the 1970's, having mastered the technical in and outs of etching, Schrameijer made them obsessively - almost two hundred - rivers, coastal scenes, ponds, dikes in the Netherlands and abroad.  After that, he returned to the Zeeuws Vlaanders coast with its lighthouses, piers and wharves in the communities of Groede, Vlissingen, Yerseke, The Zwin, Scherpbier and the surounding area of Sluis.  With the exhibition of Grafiek '77 in the city of Hilversum, Schrameijer turned the page on the etching period.

From then on, his work was dominated by watercolours, full of water and air, executed in a fluid, spontaneous manner with colorful expressionistic undertones that rarely exceed three by five inches. Zeeland and Flanders [the southern Netherlands and northern Belgian coasts] take the lead as subject matter with the towns of Vlissingen, Breskens, Nieuwvliet, Cadzand, Knokke and Blankenberg are thoroughly explored.  During the late seventies and into the eighties the almost tropical images of windsurfers in the break of the waves become a great seduction to Schrameijer.

In the second half of the eighties, after Eila's death, Schrameijer attempted to reintroduce colour into his life with the use of acrylic paints which developed into a series of still-lifes.  Most recently, due partially to the aging of the artist and its attendant limitations, the myth of Leda and the Swan has been subject matter for the artist's output.  Concurrently, the female nude, often alluded to in the Leda drawings, are reexamined in various techniques involving collage, found material and mixed media.

EXPERIMENTATION

The current exposition [which will travel to JMAM - trans. note] at the Marie Tak van Poortvliet museum exhibits an important segment Schrameijer's career in which all the major periods are represented. According to Milikowski, it is work that deserves admiration.  "He has always been experimenting and, because of that, he has arrived at challenging results. His strength is in the simple, clear communication of place and its atmosphere.  It is both figurative and expressionistic. When I'm driving along the coast, I frequently feel as if I am in one of his watercolours." Milikowski also points to the historical-geographic relevance of the work, noting that many of the places and images that are so faithfully rendered no longer exist.  For example, the wreckage of The Uilenspeigel in 1962, stranded along the coast between Cadzand-Bad and The Zwin has become submerged under the drfting sands of the beach.


"Figurative art is still considered a tiresome affair," concludes Milikowski.  "Museums tend to dither in their relationship with it because abstract and conceptual art weighs more heavily in any discussion of modernism.  For the general public, this just isn't so, because they just like that which is recognizable. It is my opinion as an art historian; I should attempt to add, within the limitations of my own experience, a contribution to this debate.  Too many artists remain outside the reach of the searchlights."
 

# # #

Exposition; Light and Air, Wind and Water, works by Flip Schrameijer, runs through March 6 at the Marie Tak van Poortvliet museum in Domburg. The exhibition opens at the Academy for Fine Arts in Eeklo in May and comes to the Janice Mason Museum in Cadiz, Kentucky in August.

The book, Light and Air, Wind and Water, includes text by Brian Dutley Barrett and Efraim Milikowski, published by Foundation Atelier '92 [ISBN 90-805002-2-4], copyright 2004.  $54.00 (a special edition including a signed etching by the artist is available for $485.00)

 

© 2005, PZC Provinciale Zeeuwese Courant