STRUCTURE: MAGAZINE ON CONSTRUCTIONIST ART
Second Series 2, 1960
Joost Baljeu [Editor]
Amsterdam: De Beuk, Second Series 2, 1960. Original edition. Slim quarto. Printed perfect bound wrappers. 40 pp. Essays illustrated with 31 black and white images. Period correct cover design and layout by Dick van Woerkum. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Wrappers lightly worn, but a very good or better copy.
7.125 x 9.5-inch perfect bound journal with 40 pages and 31 black and white images. “Although they continued to build upon the design principles of De Stijl, the Bauhaus, and pre-war constructivist tendencies, the debate which they carried on within the pages was not a dogmatic repetition of what their predecessors had written. They threw in their lot with those elements in society that were striving for innovation, and tried to give the geometric form language a new significance by basing their theoretical case on contemporary scientific notions. One of the few art historians who early on assessed these developments at their true worth was the Englishman Stephen Ban. In 1974 he accorded the journal a prominent place within the canon of modern art by including articles from 'Structure' in 'The Tradition of Constructivism" alongside publications by such influential pioneers as Gabo, Pevsner, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Theo van Doesburg . . . .”— Jonneke Jobse, The Journal Structure (1958-1964): An Artist's Debate, 010 Publishers, 2005
Contents:
- Second Series, Number 2, 1960: Art and Motion
- The Mobile by Kenneth Martin
- Perception by G. Vantongerloo
- Synthesist Art: the Art of Possibility by Joost Baljeu
- Art and Motion by Charles Biederman
- Movement in the Domain of Static Construction by Anthony Hill
- Architecture and Motion: Is Architecture still on the move? by D. van Woerkman
Includes work by Kenneth Martin, Jean Gorin, Carel N. Visser, Georges Vantongerloo, John Ernest, Joost Baljeu, Giotto, Sandro Botticelli, Paul Signac, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Giacomo Balla, Piet Mondrian, Charles Biederman, Anthony Hill, and Dick van Woerkman.
Joost Baljeu (The Netherlands, 1925 –1991) was a Dutch painter, sculptor and writer known for his large outdoor painted steel structures. During World War II Baljeu began painting in an expressionist, realistic and semi-abstract idiom that eventually evolved into constructivism. He made his first reliefs in 1954-55. From 1957 to 1972 he was a professor at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.
In 1958 – 1959 Baljeu was a guest lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada where he met the Canadian artist Eli Bornstein who had began to make three-dimensional "structurist" reliefs during a sabbatical in Italy and the Netherlands in 1957. In 1958 Joost Baljeu published and edited "Structure" with Eli Bornstein. He used the magazine to situate his ideas in relation to other contemporary movements and artists' cooperatives and to secure a foothold for himself in the international art world.
In 1962 the Sikkens Prize was awarded to a party of five: visual artists Jean Gorin, Charles Biederman and Joost Baljeu, architect Dick van Woerkom and the journal Structure (1958-1964), founded by Baljeu. They received the prize for the revival of constructivism and the presentation of universal laws in the line of De Stijl with the aim of achieving the complete renovation of our social environment, from the home to the city.
Dick van Woerkum [Burma, 1924 – 1987] strove to embody the theories of artists’ group De Stijl in his architecture. Born in Rangoon, Van Woerkom, receives his technical education during the Second World War at colleges in The Hague and Haarlem. After the war, he completes his training at the Technische Hogeschool in Delft and the Academie voor Bouwkunst in Amsterdam.
He begins his career as architectural draughtsman at the offices of A. Komter and Merkelbach & Elling in Amsterdam, and sets up an independent practice as an architect in 1955. Van Woerkom holds very specific views about architecture, and is keen to continue the tradition of De Stijl. Partly with this in mind, he works on a number of projects with artist Joost Baljeu. Van Woerkom does not have a large body of work; his reputation rests on his theoretical, rather than his practical accomplishments.
From 1978 to 1986, Van Woerkom runs the Netherlands Documentation Centre for Architecture (Nederlands Documentatiecentrum voor de Bouwkunst), the institution which merges with the Netherlands Architecture Institute in 1988.