ANTOON MELISSEN
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Jan Schoonhoven - Van huis tot huis
Brieven aan Jan Henderikse

Antoon Melissen (ed.)

Spring 2023

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Herbert ZANGS
Antoon Melissen (ed.)

A major monograph on German avant-garde artist Herbert Zangs (1924-2003).
With essays by Klaus Honnef, Peter Iden, Antoon Melissen and Renate Wiehager.

Fall 2023

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ISBN 978-3-7356-0436-1
Design Harald Slaterus, Arnhem

Bilingual edition (German/English)
Hardcover, 96 pages
Waanders Uitgevers (Zwolle)
April 2022
Caroline Hofman
The Aesthetics of Silence

Antoon Melissen (ed.)

​
In the summer of 2019 Caroline Hofman sent me a series of snapshots of her studio in Aachen. The photographs reflect everyday reality, works in progress and reflections and shadows on her glass worktop. Hofman labelled these photos ‘Before’, to preclude any misunderstanding. For rather than show works of art as ‘end results’, at most they provide an impression of the workspace and the work process. And yet these photos are quite revealing. It was, after all, the artist’s gaze that documented this ‘reality’ of the studio. Rhythm, structure and the expressive qualities of light and shadow: Hofman’s snapshots feature characteristics that also define her work in a significant way.
Hofman works with paper and card- board, or to put it a better way, she speculates on the possibilities that these ostensibly simple materials can offer her. In her three- dimensional compositions, she operates along the fault line between alienation and recognition. Abstract structures, but also feathers, scaffoldings, chairs and wickerwork cut out of paper and cardboard: Hofman opens our eyes to the unexpected context and strong graphic qualities of the familiar and the ordinary.

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ISBN 978-3-7356-0769-0
Design Stephan Holitschke, Büro für Visuelle Identitäten, Munich
Bilingual edition (German/English)
Softcover, two books in a cassette. 64 / 80 pages
Kerber Verlag (Bielefeld/
Berlin)
April 2021
 

PRESENTED ON:
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​​Joseph Beuys - Lothar Wolleh
The Unterwasserbuch Project
​
Antoon Melissen (ed.)

​
In January 1971, Joseph Beuys (Krefeld, 1921–Düsseldorf, 1986) had his first museum exhibition outside the German-speaking world, at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Photographer Lothar Wolleh accompanied Beuys to Stockholm and documented the setting up of this exhibition. These photos formed the basis of an exceptional project, an artist’s book composed under both their names that ultimately attained fame under the title Unterwasserbuch
(Underwater Book).
​This publication contains the re-edition of this artist’s book, the first part of this cassette. The second part of this cassette reconstructs the rich, wondrous history of ‘Project Unterwasserbuch’ with previously unpublished photographs, sketches and correspondence. Together, these books are an imprint of the creative discourse of the 1970s, but equally tell the story of two kindred spirits. 

Visit: www.lothar-wolleh.com
The Estate offers a limited edition of Lothar Wolleh's portraits, to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Joseph Beuys.
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All images, © Lothar Wolleh Estate, Berlin

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ISBN 978-94-6208-500-8 (Dutch edition)
ISBN 978-94-6208-505-3 (English edition)
Design Haller Brun, Amsterdam
Softcover, 166 pages
nai010 uitgevers (Rotterdam)
​February 2019
Manzoni in Holland
Colin Huizing (ed.)
​
As one of the greatest pioneers of international conceptual art, Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) maintained strong ties with the Netherlands. The unlocking of Manzoni's  intensive correspondence with Rotterdam gallery owner Hans Sonnenberg has revealed the extent of Manzoni's influence on the Dutch postwar avant-garde. 
Manzoni's work was of great influence on artists associated with the Dutch Nul-group and the international ZERO-movement. This book tells the untold story of Piero Manzoni's special relationship with the Netherlands.
With contributions by Colin Huizing, Julia Mullié and Antoon Melissen.

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ISBN 978-3-7356-0438
Design Scherpontwerp, Eindhoven

Bilingual edition (German/English)
softcover, 288 pages
Kerber Verlag (Bielefeld/Berlin)
September 2018
​​Jan Henderikse - In Transit
​Antoon Melissen

​This major monograph pays homage to Dutch artist Jan Henderikse (Delft, 1937), one of the key players in European art after 1960.
 Four richly illustrated chapters shed light on his multi-form oeuvre – and on the difficulty of pigeonholing the artist. A
ssemblages and readymades, photography, film, artist's books and installation art: Henderikse has always been an artist 'in between', flirting with the purity of the ZERO movement, with the object-related imagery of the Nouveaux Réalistes, with Pop Art and with Fluxus. 
​This monograph is an important addition to the history of the Dutch Nul group and ZERO. New material from Jan and Idi Henderikse's personal archive make this publication an essential read.

Published in conjunction with the Jan Henderikse Foundation. Visit also:

www.janhenderikse-foundation.com

Part of this publication is a signed artwork in a limited edition.



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ISBN 978-3-7356-0436-1
Design Loek Kemming, Office for Design

Bilingual edition (German/English)
Hardcover, 192 pages
Kerber Verlag (Bielefeld/Berlin)
August 2018
Riki Mijling. Void/Volume
Antoon Melissen (ed.)

​It was in the winter of 2016, that the newly formed Riki Mijling Foundation announced its plans to support a monographic publication on Riki Mijling.

​In his essay, Melissen traces the origin of Mijling’s work, placing it in a context of predecessors and contemporaries. His essay will link the development of her oeuvre to influential exhibitions, biennales and publications from the mid-1970s onwards. Thus, this essay offers ​more than an insight in the topicality of 
Riki Mijling’s oeuvre alone: it also mirrors a changing cultural landscape which, since the 1970s, has become increasingly transboundary and multi-disciplinary. ​
​
Peter Lodermeyer’s essay will put special emphasis on the rich tradition of European minimalist tendencies, and the meaning of Mijling’s work in relation to contemporary notions of 'minimalism' and 'non-objectivity'.

This book is also available as a collectors edition with an original artwork. See:
www.rikimijling-foundation.com



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Lothar Wolleh
Antoon Melissen (ed.)

​Spring 2024


A monographic publication (300+ pages) on German photographer Lothar Wolleh (Berlin, 1930-London, 1979). 
With essays by Antoon Melissen and Renate Wiehager.

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ISBN 978-94-6208-248-9 (Dutch edition)
ISBN 978-94-6208-249-6 (English edition)
Design Studio Joost Grootens
Hardcover, 192 pages
nai010 uitgevers (Rotterdam)
​December 2015
Awarded 'Best Dutch Book Designs 2015'

Jan Schoonhoven
Antoon Melissen
​

For Almost 40 years, Jan J. Schoonhoven worked on his highly distinctive monochrome white reliefs, made of papier-mâché, paper and cardboard. The central theme of this monograph is the development op Schoonhoven's oeuvre, from the earliest gouaches in the late 1930s to the last signed relief, made in the early 1990s. This monograph includes a thorough discussion of Schoonhoven's significance in the international ZERO movement.
Attention to the contexts in which he made his drawings and reliefs also offers a new perspective on Schoonhovens live and artistic career. A selection of Schoonhoven's writings on art from the years 1958-1975 convey an intimate sense of the artist's ideas and methods.

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ISBN 978-94-6208-185-7 (Dutch edition)
ISBN 978-94-6208-186-4 (English edition)
Design Vanessa van Dam
Hardcover, 272 pages
nai010 uitgevers (Rotterdam)
April 2015
Armando. Between Knowing and Understanding
Antoon Melissen (ed., with Yvonne Ploum)

This monumental monograph is devoted to one of the most important post-war Dutch artists. Armando (*1929) has worked for decades on an oeuvre exploring such themes as melancholy, power, powerlessness and the uneasy fusion of beauty and evil.
Since the late 1950s, he has been one of a vanguard of artistic innovators as an artist, poet and writer, and more recently as a maker of television and theatre.
With a selection of more than 250 works and four lavishly illustrated essays, this book presents an overview of Armando’s oeuvre - from the early Informal years, his association with the international ZERO movement, and developments of later years. For the first time, the full breadth of a unique, eclectic artistic career spanning six decades is revealed.

Published in conjunction with MOA, Museum Oud Amelisweerd/Collectie Armando, Bunnik (the Netherlands).

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ISBN 978-9491-775-680
Design Studio Luc Derycke
Hardcover, 532 pages
Asamer Press (Ghent)
​October 2015
The Artist as Curator. Collaborative Initiatives in the International ZERO Movement
Tiziana Caianiello and Tijs Visser (eds.)  

Between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, a new artistic movement emerged in Europe that came to be known under the name ZERO, as artists from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Switzerland sought new ways to collaborate and create new platform for their activities. ​This book focuses on the main projects realized by artists from the ZERO context and is the first comprehensive study on this subject.
This book presents the result of several years of collaboration by an international group of scholars put together by the ZERO foundation. 

With contributions by Tiziana Caianiello, Stefan Geiger, Antje von Graevenitz, Beate Kemfert, Serge Lemoine, Antoon Melissen, Andres Pardey, Johan Pas, Francesca Pola, Dirk Pörschmann, Tina Rivers Ryan, Ulrike Schmitt, Caroline de Westenholz and Thekla Zell.


Published in conjunction with the ZERO foundation, Düsseldorf.

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ISBN 978-3-86335-698-9 (Dutch edition)
ISBN 978-3-86335-697-2 (German edition)
Design Mevis en Van Deursen
Softcover, 560 pages
Accompanying the exhibition at Museum Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin/Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2015
Walter König Books (Cologne)

April 2015
ZERO
Dirk Pörschmann and Margriet Schavemaker (eds.)

Over 50 years after the founding of the ZERO movement thtis most comprehensive publication ever is devoted not only to the first founding artists Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker, nor even just to these international artists who were close to ZERO such as Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana, but also to such forgotten artists as Hermann Goepfert, Oskar Holweck or Hans Salentin. This catalogue accompanies the travelling ZERO-exhibition at Museum Gropius Bau, Berlin, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The 45 artists selected, including 11 from Germany, reflect the ideas of the ZERO founders, both in a formal and a conceptual sense. This publication includes an impressive amount of documentation on historical exhibitions, events, artists' writings and magazines.

With essays by Daniel Birnbaum, Antoon Melissen, Johan Pas, Francesca Pola, Dirk Pörschmann, Margriet Schavemaker, Mattijs Visser, and Thekla Zell.

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ISBN 978-88-317-1888-2 (Italian edition)
ISBN 978-88-317-1918-6 (English edition)

Softcover, 
648 pages, accompanying the exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2014-2015.
Marsilio Editore (Venice)
September 2014
AZIMUT|H. Continuity and Newness
Luca Massimo Barbero (ed.)


​Autumn 2014, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection celebrated the neo-avant-gardes with an exhibition dedicated to Azimut/h, the gallery and the review founded in 1959 by Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. The exhibition set out to reconstruct the fundamental role played by Azimuth/h and by the revolutionary new generation of creative spirits that it brought together, in the panorama of experimental and new art in Italy and Europe at that time. 
With a full selection of works of art but also printed and manuscript documentation, some unpublished, this exhibition will bring to life this short but intense story characteristic of the internationalization of contemporary art in the period following World War II.

With essays by Luca Massimo Barbero, Flaminio Gualdoni, Antoon Melissen, Francesca Pola, and Federico Sardella.

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ISBN 978-90-5662-859-8 (Dutch edition)
ISBN 978-90-5662-860-4 (English edition)
Design Esther de Vries, Niessen & de Vries, Amsterdam
Hardcover, 516 pages
nai010 uitgevers (Rotterdam)
Publcation date: April 2012
Auke de Vries. Sculptures, Drawings and Work in Public Space
Antoon Melissen (ed., with Esther de Vries)

Dutch artist Auke de Vries (b. 1937) is best known for the elegant and whimsical sculptures he constructs in public space, both in the Netherlands and around the world. His striking permanent sculptures such as the Maasbeeld in Rotterdam, the Hollands Spoor Station sculpture in The Hague, the work in the pond of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, on the roof of the Daimler-Chrysler Building in Berlin, and many projects in cities such as Istanbul, Johannesburg, Aberdeen, Frankfurt make him one of the most well-known artists of work in public space.
Less well-known is that De Vries’s artistic spectrum extends far beyond sculpture, ranging from tiny sketches to large-scale spatial design studies. In 2012 De Vries turns 75 and he has been an artist over 50 years. This book presents, for the first time, an overview of the oeuvre De Vries has produced over the course of more than 50 years.

​With essays by Rudi Fuchs,
​Antoon Melissen and Renate Wiehager.

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ISBN 978-3-7757-2597-2
Design superfantastic_berlin

Bilingual edition (English/German)
Hardcover, 311 pages
Hatje Lantz Verlag (Ostfildern) 
Publication date: April 2010
Jan Henderikse. Acheiropoieta
Renate Wiehager and Antoon Melissen (eds.)

Jan Henderikse (*1937) called a 1996 exhibition of his ready-mades Acheiropoieta (literally "not handmade”), an antique term for a particular type of icon that originates miraculously. As early as 1961–62, the artist’s works anticipated major contemporary trends in art, employing everyday materials in the tradition of the ready-made, assemblage and montage, mirroring the purism of the ZERO movement, but echoing Nouveau Réalismea nd Pop Art at the same time. 
Henderikse augmented his material basis in the seventies and eighties with conceptual artists’ books, photographic series, and installations comprising “ready-found” photographic material and films.
This monograph lists major works from public and private collections for the first time, thus enabling renewed access to the artist’s complex multimedia oeuvre.

Other publications (a selection)
  • Antoon Melissen, Riki Mijling - Infinite Void, Riki Mijling Foundation, Doetichem, 2021, (author)
  • Antoon Melissen, Dolf Verlinden. Veld verkennen, Uitgeverij de Kleine Uil, Groningen, 2019 (author)
  • Antoon Melissen, 'Herbert Zangs: Brutal, Palpable, Creative. In conversation with Emmy de Martelaere', Blain-Southern, Londen, 2019 (author)​
  • Colin Huizing (ed.), Jan Henderikse. Alles en niets, ex. cat. Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, 2018 (author, with Colin Huizing)
  • Antoon Melissen, 'A propos: Manzoni & Co. The Real, the White and the Aesthetics of Change', contribution to the catalogue raisonné of Herbert Zangs, compiled by Emmy de Martelaere, 2018 (author)​
  • Antoon Melissen, Tussen handwerk en concept. Het warme wit van Jan Schoonhoven,  Rabo Art Collection, 2018 (author)
  • Francesca Pola and Antoon Melissen, Jan Henderikse. MINT, ex. cat. Cortesi Gallery, Londen and Skira Milan, 2018 (author)
  • Emma van Proosdij, Antoon Melissen, Auke de Vries. Tussenlanding, ex. cat. Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen/Den Haag, 2017 (author)
  • Antoon Melissen, Kopf, Herz, Hand - Armando's lof der schilderkunst, ex. cat., Galerie Post + Garcia, Maastricht, 2017 (author)  
  • Antoon Melissen, Alexandra Philips. Until the Last Drop, ex. cat., Schoots + van Duyse, Antwerp, 2016 (author)​
  • Antoon Melissen and Sibylle Badstübner-Gröger, Sabine Laidig. CHROMA,  ex. cat. Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen/Lütze Museum and Galeria 72 / Muzeum Chelmskie w Chelmie, Chelm, Poland, 2015 (author)​
  • 'Teveel is niet genoeg. Jan Henderikse en ZERO', Kunstschrift, 3/2015 (author)​
  • Jan Henderikse. Works on Paper, 1957, Lecturis Publishers, 2013 (editor and author)
  • Jan Henderikse. Kaleidoscopia, Lecturis Publishers, 2013 (editor and author)
  • Henk Peeters. Sensual ZERO, brochure text for the exhibition at Locus Solus Gallery, Antwerp, 2013 (author)
  • Jan Schoonhoven, catalogue text Borzo Gallery for Art Basel, 2013 (author, with Paul van Rosmalen​
  • Street credibility. Realisme volgens Jan Henderikse, catalogue Borzo Gallery, Amsterdam, 2012 (author, with Paul van Rosmalen​
  • Jan Henderikse. Nickel. Artist's Edition, signed and numbered multiple + booklet, Luiscius Publishers, Den Bosch, 2011 (author)
  • Jan Henderikse. Loco. Van nul tot nu, brochure text for the exhibition at Locus Solus Gallery, Antwerp, 2011 (author)
  • Riki Mijling, Ver sem Analisar, Centro de Artes e Cultura de Ponte de Sor, Portugal, 2011 (author)
  • Colin Huizing and Tijs Visser (eds.), Nul=0, The Dutch nul group in an international context, nai010, 2010 (author, with Colin Huizing, Tijs Visser, Caroline de Westenholz, Renate Wiehager, Atsuo Yamamoto and Midori Yamamura)
  • Gijs van Bon. Time Moving Abstract Pieces/Autonomous Theatrical Objects, D'jonge hond Publishers, 2010 (author)​​
  • Riki Mijling. Resonance, 2010 (author)
  • Jan Henderikse. Assemlages, Multiples, Ready-Mades, book with signed and numbered multiple,  J.P. De Paepe Editions, Brugge, 2008 (editor and author, with Renate Wiehager)
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