Benfo-Dutch

Benfo is a co-operation between two Dutch contemporary painters Ben Vollers and Fons Heijnsbroek who paint together from time to time. We both do practice abstract-expressionistic painting since 1990 and have many picture-shows together. We live and work in Amsterdam and know each other since 1992; we argue and discuss our new works frequently. Since 2006 we started to paint together on one canvas - spontaneously and directly, like jamming - in the Benfo-project. Besides this 'paint-jamming' we make our individual paintings. And together we frequnetly discuss texts, movies and quotes from artists of abstract art and abstract-expressionism; we use them for our own discussions to understand our own art better.

The quotes and textes which generates from our many exchanges will be placed on the English and Dutch Wikiquote and Wikipedia -- Dutch Wikiquote: [1] -- by me, Fons Heijnsbroek, under the account User:Benfo-Dutch. So I hope that others will also re-discover and re-understand the typical 'kitchen' of abstract and abstract-expressionistic art; it is after all the community of artists where art grows and finds its forms! My recent made abstract art you can find and see here.

Contributed Artists quotes on Wikiquote:

(you find a link to the following artist quotes on Wikiquote at the bottom of every Wikipedia artist-page)

-- A t/m G -- * Joseph Albers * Jean Arp * Giacomo Balla * William Baziotes * Joseph Beuys * Andre Breton * Georges Braque * Paul Cézanne * Marc Chagall * Giorgio de Chirico * John Constable * Theo van Doesburg * Jean Dubuffet * Marcel Duchamp * Helen Frankenthaler * Arshile Gorky * Adolph Gottlieb * Phillip Guston   -- H t/m N -- * Marsden Hartley * Barbara Hepworth * Hans Hofmann * Edward Hopper * Alexej von Jawlensky * Jasper Johns * Asger Jorn * Wassily Kandinsky * Yves Klein * Franz Kline * Paul Klee * Willem de Kooning * Fernand Léger * Piet Mondrian * Henry Moore   -- O t/m Z -- * Georgia O'Keeffe * Pablo Picasso * Jackson Pollock * Mark Rothko * Robert Rauschenberg * Michel Seuphor * Clyfford Still * Gino Severini * Antoni Tàpies * Mark Tobey * Bram van Velde

Some thoughts on collecting quotes of artists

In art there exists a special kind of thinking, of reflections, because the thoughts of artists are strongly connected with form and the materials to express them, and with the question how to built visual shapes. This connection marks very deeply the character and the intention of the ideas artists make. Also the sensitivity of the artist is strongly influenced by this relation, because it is the world with its phenomena and evolution full of its changing faces, which gives ideas to create. For instance Fernand Leger was very aware of the way riding in a car in the 1920's did influence his perception of the landscape. And some decades later it is Willem de Kooning who recognizes in the American highways a new kind of landscape, which gives him inspiration to find a new attitude to it. Even most theoretical artists as Joseph Beuys or Yves Klein are forced to go ‘down to earth’ with their speculations, as they try to connect their speculative thinkings with an image, or a sculpture or an object. Ideas in art by artists have always a kind of practical intention. Their thoughts don't come together easily in a theory or in a critic or analyses; their thoughts do not form a complete verbal 'picture', and in that way the artists themselvers feel a little uncomfortable in how to connect their ideas all together. In some way their verbal thinking is a labyrinth, but a labyrinth full of connections, associations, bridges which connect the ideas.

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