TEFAF Online 2020: ONLINE ONLY

The first edition of TEFAF Online will take place from 1 to 4 November, where 300 international participants will each show one top work. You can register via www.tefaf.com. For this first edition, BorzoGallery has selected a work by the Dutch matter artist Jaap Wagemaker (1906-1972), following the successful gallery exhibition Earth & Light.

In 1959 Hans Sonnenberg organized the ZERO exhibition in the Rotterdamse Kunstkring, with work by Manzoni, Tajiri, Schoonhoven and Wagemaker among others. A year before this, Hans Sonnenberg, who went on to become a legendary gallery owner and art promoter, had brought Piero Manzoni to the Netherlands and shown his work in Rotterdam. He had exhibited Jaap Wagemaker earlier, and in any case at that time Wagemaker was already a well-known international artist. The same could not yet be said for Jan Schoonhoven, who in those days stood at the beginning of his career as a ZERO artist. (Sonnenberg had to drop the title ZERO at the request of the Dusseldorf artists Mack, Piene and Uecker, who had actually claimed ZERO for their group the year before)
The Rotterdam exhibition from 1959, which subsequently travelled on to Antwerp and Rome was the first exhibition to represent the two Dutch artists together with Piero Manzoni.

In the nineteen-fifties Jaap Wagemaker enjoyed a solid and international reputation with various museum exhibitions throughout Europe and several prestigious prizes. Matter Art was also attracting a great deal of interest all over Europe with proponents such as Alberto Burri, Antoni Tapiès, Emil Schuhmacher, Bram Bogart and Jean Dubuffet. The Dutchman Jaap Wagemaker falls into this group.

In 1960 Wagemaker was rewarded with the prestigious Premio Marzotto, followed with exhibitions in Valdagno, Milan, Munich, Paris and Brussels.
His first New York exhibition was with the Graham Gallery in 1960, followed in 1961 with Wagemaker participating in the major MoMA exhibition "The Art of Assemblage", resulting in the MoMA's purchase of an assemblage painting by Wagemaker. In 1962 he was present in the Dutch pavilion of the Venice Biennale.

"Mur Vivant" is one of only 28 assemblage paintings by Jaap Wagemaker of this crucial year 1959.