Make Collective Automatic Painting wasn't planned

"Worlds in Collision II"
CAPA painting from Freddy Flores Knistoff and Rik Lina (1991)
(acrylic, oil, ink, enamel and collage over canvas, 140 x 100 cm) 

When did the aesthetic-pictorial movement of "collective automatic painting" began?

Under this statement, several issues that deserve and require a small analysis to contrast certain information that sometimes appears diffuse and at the same time confusing with respect to the same origin of this movement, and for this, it is necessary to refer to Freddy Flores Knistoff, yes perhaps, the most important of the founders of this magnificent movement of automatic and experimental artists, being here where we break down and throw some small rays of light to this exciting story that in 2021 turned 30 and that it is already for 31 years. A confusing document is that of some photographs dated in November 1991 in which Rik Lina appears next to Freddy Flores Knistoff performing several automatic paintings in a gallery of art and about what appears to be an installation. The story behind these photographs is very interesting since it turns out that Freddy and Rik along with other invited artists (called in the publication as Droomschaar artists, something completely wrong, since they only participated in the publication but were not artists linked entirely to this anarchist-surrealist collective, perhaps in exception of Rik Lina) went to visit the exhibition of the Automatic Swedish-German artist K. R. H. Sonderborg at the Boër Gallery of Hannover and in which the same painter was going to perform a performance but that for reasons we unknown, the artist in question could not attend and were Rik and Freddy who offered to work on the arranged material. All in all, that was never planned and did not paint collectively but only painted "automatically" for saying it in a way. This vanishes the story behind these photographs.

One realises that the more one digs, the more one finds talismans that one has to look at closely, and that is what is happening with the history of CAPA, its foundation, which until now had remained hidden. And the more one digs, the more one realises that this movement of artists that arose in Amsterdam would never have arisen if it had not been for the activity of Freddy Flores Knistoff in his conversations with Rik Lina about automatism, Freddy himself tells us that they got together and created automatic painting, these conversations being the fruit of the discovery if perhaps by chance the objective of the foundation of Collective Automatic Painting, painting in this way was never planned. To this must be added that Freddy had already been working under experimental precepts that linked him to Modificationism and that from the beginning he promoted this career through the experience he had of other pictorial movements such as CoBrA, Roberto Matta, North American Abstract Expressionism and Modificationism (called in other ways according to its subject matter and application - Appropriationism, Ready Made, Interventionism, among others). It is also interesting to note that CAPA did not start out as CAPA, in fact, as Freddy tells us, it never presented itself as something closed or as an indissoluble group of artists, but quite the opposite, as a transversal and free space for the intellectual exchange of ideas linked to painting and automatism and that this "name" arose only to label the group of artists who worked at a key moment in the history of Collective Automatic Painting and that was in the exhibition "Phases-Surrealismo e Contemporaneidade del Museo de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo en Brasil en 1997" curated by the critic Daisy Peccinini, which also labelled the group of artists under the title of "the new CoBrA", the first exhibition to refer to "CAPA". All in all, an exhibition which, as is well known, coincided with the bifurcation of its members Freddy and Rik, displacing Rik Lina within the parameters of International Surrealism, rather than Automatic Painting itself, and Freddy with his interests linked to "Modificationism" and "Absolute Automatism" in the same pictorial language. However, the most important of all this is that according to Freddy, "CAPA did not exist, I invited Rik to my studio to work, because he did not have a studio in 1991, and from there we created the first collective automatic paintings in a highly experimental period". In this sense, it is also very important to point out that it was Freddy Flores Knistoff who encouraged the Dutch painter to work collaboratively and that it was in Kennedylaan's studio that the first collective automatic works signed by both artists were created. According to Freddy, during this year's production, around twenty large and medium format works were produced, of which here are two magnificent works "titled" by Rik Lina as "Worlds in Collision". About this, we know that Freddy never liked to title the works as each work itself represents an infinite search for pictorial knowledge and that it refers only to itself. Nevertheless, one as a researcher is grateful for a reference for documentary purposes.

 

"Worlds in Collision I"
CAPA Painting from Freddy Flores Knistoff and Rik Lina (1991)
(acrylic, oil, ink, enamel and collage over canvas, 140 x 100 cm) 

The avant-garde won’t give up

Collective Automatic Painting over wall and Gerda van der Krans "automatic sculptures" at the Gallery 13 (Germany, Hannover) during a "Collective Automatic Painting" exhibition held in October 1992. In the picture: Freddy Flores Knistoff (front) and Dave Dobroske (background) working (Action Painting) over Gerda sculptures hanged in the same wall, creating a sort of a Collective Automatic Experimental Installation. This picture was taken by Mauricio Jalil (photographer and friend of Freddy)

Making a nemotechnical exercise through the dense documentation that involves the History of Art and this movement of automatic artists and, always attending the main source of such context through the automatic artist Freddy Flores Knistoff; we see how from the beginning of the practice of Collective Automatic Painting there was a continuity with ideas related to the "Modificationism" as a field of experimentation. This is how Freddy tells us that even before the realization of the countless canvases he realized next to Rik Lina in 1991 at the Kennedylann studio in Amsterdam; he already worked for several years under the aesthetic concepts of the "Modificationism", proof of this, are the same works that he shared in other artistic activities and publications prior to the emergence of the Collective Automatic Paintings, such as the publications of the Anarchist-Surrealist magazine "Droomschaar" (pictures (1), (2)) or the same Freddy exhibitions at Hannover Gallery 13. Wathever the case may be, the experimental opening that occurred in CAPA always operated as a skillful conservator of this artistic trend and that Freddy himself inserted from the beginning in performing what it means today CAPA. On the history of "Modificationism" there is a capital and mandatory text for the understanding of this variant or rather, knowledge of what it was "the last European vanguard" from a historiographical point of view. The thesis in question is that of the researcher and Art Historian Karen Kurczynski, (today associated Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts) entitled: "Expressions as Vandalism: Asger Jorn's" Modifications "published in the research magazine of the University of Massachusetts in 2008, "Anthropology and Aesthetics" Volume 53-54 in Association with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; text that we include integrally below. To recap, the text in question talks about the importance of this "trend" that arose around 1959 under other aesthetic concepts such as that of the "New Disfigurations" in the work of Asger Jorn and soon from other artists such as Enrico Baj and Daniel Spoerri and who drank other artistic solutions contributed by the genius of Marcel Duchamp . However, each artist understood in a different way the hatching of this type of artistic solution but unwittingly opened a new field of experimentation that until today has been maintained as something innate of contemporary artistic production. It is also interesting to note that this type of attitude arose as a protest, a protesting attitude that protested - if you will forgive the repetition- about the alienation of the historical vanguard's by the Parisian Artistic Academy. Therefore, we could say that this protest arose as a new solution to the demands of a context marked by the "robbery and mercantilism" of the historical avant-garde's and what is already popularly accepted as valid. That is why the new "Modification" movement was presented as the last great and genuine movement or "ism" of liberation of Arts.

Expression as Vandalism: Asger Jorn's "Modifications" by Karen Kurczynski 

 

(1)

(2)

CAPA: Seek Inside (exhibition at the Бункер / Bunker Gallery Project in Varna, Bulgaria)

CAPA: Seek Inside is the first exhibition of the CAPA Movement in Bulgaria and not just one exhibition but two of them thanks to the support and invitation of the experimental Gallery Бункер Bunker of Bulgaria. The first exhibition will be held at the II World War abandoned Bunker of Varna at the forest of the city and the next exhibition will be held at the abandoned Bunker of Ezerets. Both Bunkers are managed by different events creators and curators but linked in the idea of presenting Contemporary Art and Artists to the public through a very inisual way of do it. The Bunkers are totally conservated as they were so no light or electricity are installed in order to move the guest of the exhibitions to use their cellphones lanterns during the visit. Neno Belchev the curator of the project tell us that this project is a low budget project so the space do not intend to present original artworks but only copies and that the focus of the project is to present Contemproary Art and Artists to everyone to break with the idea of the Museum or regular gallery as a unique space of exhibition. He also say that the space itself have history and a specific context. The context of the II World War. A context that has been representated by very different minds and understandings of what it is to dialogue with these unique spaces. Until know the Бункер Bunker Gallery has presented the solo work of the CAPA Members Patricio Álvarez Aragón and Marcos Vidal Font, also has presented the work of the recognized Bulgarian Land Art artist Penka Mincheva, an interesting exhibition/research of the Russian photographer Yakov Shustov "about the rest of Militaries", the intervention of Dessislava Atanasova and has celebrated an interesting collective within the ideas of the "Feminism" on March 8.

You can check out more about the Gallery/Project and Space here

CAPA is pleased to be the first "group exhibition" at the Bunker Varna and Ezerets (Ezeretzsky branch) and to exhibit for the first time at Bulgaria. The work displayed at the exhibitions was a product of an ardouos work between the CAPA members Freddy Flores Knistoff, José Estevão, James Burns, Jorge J. Herrera Fuentealba, Patricio Álvarez Aragón, Marcos Vidal Font and Eduardo Rojo during the moths of January to May 2021. Because of the pandemic of the Covid-19, CAPA started to work remotely via post and more than 49 works were exchanged during the creative process and modification (the main topic and activity of CAPA Knistoff branch) between the countries of EE.UU (Seatlle), Portugal (Aljustrel), The Netherlands (Amsterdam), Ireland (Dublin) and Spain (Palma de Mallorca). An exhausting job full of patience and love for painting, the collaborative work and experimentation.

*First CAPA exhibition at the Бункер Bunker Gallery in Varna will be available to visit under petition until the 27 of July o 2021. Soon will be more information about the second part at Ezerest!

You can reach the curator and sign up for your participation here

CAPA 2020 Automatic Painting on Paper Portfolio for Collectors

We are very happy to announce that the "CAPA 2020 Portfolio for Collectors" has finally come out of print! Thanks to our personal bookbinder in Amsterdam.

CAPA 2020 is a portfolio created for collectors of painting on small format paper (21x29.7cm) that, like our Collection of Artists Books, are part of a limited edition of copies. In this edition for collectors, there has only been a print run of 15 copies where each work of art is unique in its form and execution.

In the portfolio you will find and essay written by @patricioalvarezaragon, titled, "When the Grotesque Looms" written in English and Spanish and the original artworks of the following artists linked with the automatism: 

Freddy Flores Knistoff (Amsterdam, NL)
James Burns (Seattle, US)
José Estevao (Amsterdam, NL)
Jorge Herrera Fuentealba (Wormerveer, NL)
Patricio Álvarez Aragón (Dublin, IE)
Marcos Vidal Font (Mallorca, ES) 
Eduardo Rojo (Amsterdam, NL) 

Any questions about how to get your CAPA 2020 Portfolio, please, just send us a private message and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible.

 

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CAPA and its legacies. A "CoBrA Modification" and the Danish "Linien" group

It is difficult to find collaborative paintings on CoBra's legacy but sometimes we have enough luck to discover great masterpieces hidden, wrongly catalogated or cataloged in so many ways that definitely makes research and revisionism more interesting. Like the painting that we are going to talk next and that the Dutch art historian Willemijn Stokvis has cataloged as a "Cobra Modification", a painting with no title, but whose elaboration rise as a strong testimony of a "modified" painting inside the CoBrA group; an idea that Capa (Knistoff branch) has been developing since its beginning giving it a huge importance during the Capa creation process, the idea of the never-ending painting. It is well known, that CoBrA was a huge collective of artists and writers that was not limited to Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam but it transcended its limits sharing with artists and writers from other parts of Europe, like, France (Jean-Michel Atlan, Jacques Doucet), England (Stephen Gilert, William Gear), Germany (Karl Otto Götz), Sweden (Carl Otto Hultén, Anders Österlin, Max Walter Svanber) and Iceland (Svavar Gudnason), among other countries and artists that probably still remain in the shadows... When we talk about CoBrA, immediately comes to mind, the members of the Netherlands, like Karel Appel, Corneille, Constant, Anton Rooskens, Theo Wolvecamp, Jan Nieuwenhuys, Eugène Brands, Lucebert and so on, and rarely we talk about the Danish components. Everyone knows that the strongest pillar was Asger Jorn but also participated in CoBrA activities and actively: Carl-Henning Pedersen, Egill Jacobsen, Ejler Bille, Henry Heerup, Else Alfelt, Erik Nyholm, Sonja Ferlov, Erik Thomemesen, Erik Ortvad, Mogens Balle and the most important one of this little story, Richard Mortensen, who was responsable for sending this "unfinished" abstract painting to the CoBrA friends of Amsterdam via Asger Jorn and to modify it. Thanks to Willemijn Stokvis, we also know that this painting it is an oil on canvas of 1949 (size 42.5 x 62.2 cm. Now owned by the Erik Nyholm Collection) which was later modified by Erik Nyholm, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Constant, and Corneille, being a missing link of the only known "Cobra Modification". Even though we have more "collaborative work" testimonies, like the collective work done in Bregneröd (near Copenhague), the same house of Erik Nyholm (near Silkeborg), "One of these days" (a unique litography done in Malmö by CoBrA components of Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands) and, some other puntual colaborations in book ilustrations (something very common in the field of collaborative arts between writers and artists) where one of the more important components of CoBrA was Christian Dotremont with a vibrant calligraphic style (from this kind of production, we can highlight the collaborations together Jean-Michel Atlan, Corneille, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky) but none of these resemble the importance of a painting made as a collective modification; being Richard Mortensen a link of special interest to CoBrA. We know that Richard Mortensen (1910-1993), certainly became one of Cobra's main references due to his progressive vision of experimental art as well as for his long experience as one of the founders of the Danish school of abstract and symbolism painting "Linien" (1930-1952).

 

Jorn, Appel, Constant, Corneille, and Erik Nyholm painted this Cobra Modification over a Richard Mortensen oil painting in 1949. Size, 42,5 x 62,2 cm.

 

Now, beyond Richard Mortensen, there were other very important components around the "Linien" group (founded in the 1930s in Copenhagen), such as Egill Jacobsen and Ejler Bille who in 1934 stated that Linien should go further its limits, go beyond Surrealism (at that time seemed to dominate the international artistic circuit) and go beyond, beyond its imaginary and the topic of the dreams to find and give free rein to expression. They proposed abandoning this oppressive model and looking at other models such as German expressionism, but at the same time, going beyond the same one that according to Egill Jacobsen had been locked in a naturalistic vision. To do this, the new model had to follow the freedom and liberation of the expression, seeking the fantasy of expression in order to find an authentically human art, a kind of spontaneous abstract-expressionism. However, and although Ejler Bille was the first to reveal himself, soon other Linien artists followed him in their ideas. This disclosure is attached to other Danish and non-Danish artists that today are linked to CoBrA (the majority of the list being announced above). The most interesting of all this is that at the core of this split appeared from the mists, the figure of a young Danish artist named Asger Jörgensen (1914-1973), who soon adopted the world-famous alias of Asger Jorn in 1945 and, who soon over time came to play a predominant role among his peers in "Linien", first as a participant in the Höst group and then as editor and founder of the magazine "Helhesten" (magazine of the Danish experimentalist artists, between March 1941 and 1944) to finally be one of the pillars of the CoBrA Movement. In this sense, we can assert that the origin of CoBrA laid the anchor on the foundations given by critical thought in "Linien" and in its eagerness to recover the expressive component in the development of the visual arts, being the recipe for German expressionism and existentialism, other foundations on which CoBrA anchored its concerns.

 

Linien exhibition in Tokanten 1947. Photo Richard Winther

Linien exhibition at Lund University, Sweden 1950

Henrik Buch, ”Bamse” Krag Jacobsen, Albert Mertz, Kujahn Blask, and Ib Geertsen. Linien at Den Frie Exhibition Hall, 1948.

Transformations in Surrealism, towards automatism / abstract expressionism, Édouard Jaguer and the Phases magazine

The Jaguer's (Édouard & Simone) were absolutely committed with the dissemination of the poetry and visual arts of the last international European avant-gardes. Édouard Jaguer (1924-2006) was a great poet and essayist-critic and his articles on artists from very diverse and remote places were published in several books and magazines such Terzo Occhio, La Main à la Plume, La Revolution la Nuit, Le Surréalisme Révolutionnaire, Rixes, CoBrA, Boa, Il Gesto, Salamandre, La tortue-lièvre, La Brèche, Aujourdh'hui, XXième Siècle, Ellébore, Les Deux Soeurs, La Tour de Feu, La Nef, as well as in the Phases magazine itself (from its first number in 1954). Likewise, the artistic (graphic design) and curatorial direction (documentary ordering) of this great magazine was completely made by himself. We also know that the magazine was self-financed thanks to a greates curatorship that in special issues included original work by the artists presented under the auspices of the magazine. These original works, as a rule, were in small format (usually signed engravings). However, it mus be said that Phases was not only a magazine. It was a new Movement. A new Movement that started in 1952 which sought to unify the visual culture of its time, the most historical Surrealism ideas and aesthechics with the "new" branches of the "lyrical abstraction" that Andre Breton always considered as the true forms of automatism and that Breton work together with the french critic Charles Estienne in its development. The early fifties is one of the most interesting moments of the Surrealism history due to the battle of its supresion in the History of Art or rememorance, great personalities of this time and its problematics can be found in the french critics Charles Estienne and Michel Tapié. Anyway, Phases standed up in the middle of this epic battle to reunite both movements and artistic tendencies under one voice, the voice of the Experimental Arts. Phases continued its activities until Jaguer died in 2006 leaving a vast catalogue of artists encounteers and ideas that today we continue researching. 

Édouard Jaguer was a link, for all artists linked to the historical Surrealism and historical Experimentalists in favor of the avant-garde and the progress of contemporary art of that time. The Jaguers invested everything they had in their task of advancing this movement. Jaguer had a business that made belt buckles. Also, he operated as an active art merchant and had a very good relationship with various galleries around europe and France. One of these is the parisian gallery "1900-2000" which still remains under the greatest curator Marcel Fleiss. Édouard Jaguer, from a young idealist and fighter, also participated with a group of French Resistance against Nazism and the invasion of France. About Simone, we know that she was a skilled collagist who, in anonymity, signed her works under the pseudonym Anne Ethuin and to preserve the Dada wisdom.

All in all, this picture it is an unpublish faithful testimony of this activity. Here we can see Freddy Flores Knistoff (founder of CAPA) presenting a series of works of his authorship to Édouard and Simone Jaguer. Édouard Jaguer was a great fan of CAPA's work (Knistoff branch), a pity that they did not manage to develop the exhibition project that was beginning to take shape in their minds due to his early death. This photo was taken in 2000 by a friend of Freddy and on the background we can see a large collection of paintings from greatest artists liked to the Surrealism and Experimental Art history, like Enrico Baj, Pierre Alechinsky, Toyen and Cristian D'Orgeix.

 Freddy Flores Knistoff at Jaguer's Studio in París. From left to right, Édouard Jaguer, Freddy Flores Knistoff and Simone Jaguer in 2000.

"The Wedding Feast", a CAPA "Automatic Collaborative Modification" from 1997

"The Wedding Feast" (acrylic, 80 x 60cm) is an unpublished "collaborative modification painting" of CAPA components James Burns and Carlos Re, signed and dated in 1997, over a large format reproduction of namesake title (c. 1567) painted by the dutch master, linked to the sixteenth-century painting, Pieter Brueghel the Elder. About the original painting of Brueghel, displayed here we know that this masterpiece was part of his "peasant life" paintings done between (1567/1568). This paintings illustrated the peasant life from northern europe, being the most outstanding examples of Brueghel's late style, which is characterized by his use of monumental Italianate figures. In fact, it was paintings of this type which caused Brueghel to be known as the Peasant Brueghel. In addition, we know that he was a leading member of a highly circle in Antwerp. With our increasing knowledge of the symbolism contained in much sixteenth-century northern painting, it seems likely that, in addition to the obvious celebration of peasant life, the pictures have a strong moral dimension too.

 

"The Wedding Feast" is a "collaborative modification" from CAPA components: James Burns & Carlos Re, signed and dated in 1997.

 

James Burns, talk us about the importance of the collaborative process between the components but also, with the same Pieter Brueghel, through time, resulting a collaborative work redefined 430 years later giving it a new perspective. Renaissance painting is well know for being an illusionist transmitter and difusser of life of that era, an aesthetic idea which was soon coupled with the idea of "the Albertian window", the creation of an illusion that for experimental artists of the Knistoff branch, remains open to the reinvention and critical recontextualization.

 

"The Wedding Feast" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, c. 1567 (Oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm)

About Carlos Re (Argentina), we know that was member of the CAPA collective between 1993-1997, as well as the dutch artist Martin van Zomeren who participated very actively alongside Freddy and James during that period. Anyway, the story of Carlos is very mysterious because, since a trip to Spain in 2000, Freddy or James, never heard again from him. Neither in the circles of the Spanish Surrealism, Experimental Art, nor International Surrealism. His story reminds me a lot the Dada story of Arthur Cravan, missing in action and at the same time reinvented in any other kind of being. Luckily, we still have James and Freddy to remind us about this CAPA members and the way they contributed to the CAPA cultural heritage.

About James Burns, we can happily announce that he continues working actively in the CAPA Movement since he was invited by Freddy in 1994, and now become one of the strongest pillars of the Movement. Particularly, in this "collaborative modification" work, is pretty easy to identify the hand of James, in that white-bolds brushstrokes, very characteristic of his minimal style wide know between the CAPA components. The interest of J. Burns beyond CoBrA is the american type, the Action Painting and the Post-Painterly Abstraction Movements; being one of its most influential artist the minimal artist Robert Motherwell. Another link to CAPA History on hands of this Post-Minimal Automatic artist.

 

James Burns at his Studio in Seattle (June 14, 2019)