Jan Schoonhoven: "R69-2"

Jan Schoonhoven: "R69-2"
SCHOONHOVEN, JAN
Delft 1914 - 1994

Title: "R69-2".
Date: 1969.
Technique: Papier-mâché, polychromed white on chipboard, painted white.
Measurement: 94 x 94cm.
Notation: Signed, dated and titled verso upper right: J.J.Schoonhoven 1969 "R69-2". Here additionally equipped with work details.

The work will be included in the catalogue raisonné of relief works currently in preparation. We would like to thank Mr. Antoon Melissen, Amsterdam, for his kind and knowledgeable support.

Provenance:
- Galerie m, Bochum (label)
- Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia

Exhibitions:
- Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach, 1972 (label)
- Museum van Bommel, Venlo 1972 (label)
- Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1973

Literature:
- Exhib. cat. Jan J. Schoonhoven, Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach 1972, cat. no. 23
- Exhib. cat. Jan J. Schoonhoven, Museum van Bommel, Venlo 1972, cat. no. 23
- Exhib. cat. Jan Schoonhoven, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1973, cat. no. 31, ill.

- Early grid relief by the important representative of the Dutch NUL group
- The slanted, serial arrangement creates a subtle play of light and shadow
- Privately owned for decades
- Comparable large-format reliefs can now be found in major museums, including Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Modern, London

Reduction and tranquility
Jan J. Schoonhoven is one of the most important Dutch artists of the second half of the 20th century, classified as a successor to Mondrian and his neoplasticism. He became known for his minimalist, monochrome work consisting mainly of white reliefs. After training as an art teacher at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague, the Second World War and the resulting circumstances forced Schoonhoven to put his artistic ambitions on hold. Although he worked as a postal clerk until his retirement in 1979, his artistic career continued to develop. Since the early 1960s, his work has reached a wide audience and has also established itself internationally after successful participations in the 1967 São Paulo Biennial and Documenta 4 in Kassel.

Schoonhoven's work oscillates between the prevailing post-war tendencies of Informel and the Concrete Art proclaimed by Theo van Doesburg. With Schoonhoven's participation, the “Nederlandse Informele Groep” (Dutch Informal Group) was formed in 1959, which merged into the “Nul” group in 1960. Like the German group ZERO, which shares its name, the “Nul” artists' community represented the ideal of a purist aesthetic in which the rejection of traditional, established visual concepts determined a new beginning for art in the “zero hour.” In 1964, ZERO co-founder Otto Piene described ZERO in an article for the Times Literary Supplement as “an immeasurable zone in which an old state transitions into an unknown new one. At the same time, it is the ‘zone of silence and new possibilities.’” This departure from the past was a kind of productive incubation period in which silence and contemplative power were supposed to give rise to innovation.

Interplay between rigid structure and animated light effects
Situated between sculpture and painting, Schoonhoven's reliefs reject any naturalistic or symbolic statement in favor of an ascetic aura. Instead of committing themselves to illusionism, they refer solely to their own concrete material components and conditions. Accordingly, the artist has freed himself from the emotionally charged, expressive gesture of an individual signature. 
The present work, “R69-2,” is committed to a mathematical-rational, objective order. Instead of artistic expression, calculation comes to the fore here. Even the title seems committed to this sober approach. There is no narrative suggestion whatsoever; only the year and the number of the work are recorded next to the initial of the work group—within the sequence of all works created that year. According to this counting method, this is the second relief from 1969. As in numerous works by Schoonhoven, this composition, which belongs to the “grid reliefs, ” follows a strictly repetitive and serial principle. A framework of horizontal and vertical lines creates the uniform, hierarchical structure of a grid or lattice. It divides the square, white picture carrier into equal-sized square fields. However, Schoonhoven uses the subtle plastic modeling of the papier-mâché to create moments of tilt in which the individual components of the image structure shift against each other. The perspective distortion of the advancing and receding fields is triggered by the incidence of light and the resulting effects of reflections and shadows. Particularly impressive here is the "specific rippling within the taut formations of the regulated white. The interplay of its reliefs with the light evoked poetry that betrayed the style of an author." (Wim Beeren quoted from Jan Schoonhoven - Retrospectief, The Hague 1984)
Bettina Haiss

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Explanations to the Catalogue

Jan Schoonhoven
The Netherlands
Informel
ZERO
Post-War Art
Post War
1960s
Abstract
Object
Relief