THE PRIMES: 09.09

9/09/2009

Tabula Rasa - Bart Van Der Leck

With summer winding down like the supposed economic crossroads, hipsters biking back to class and government officials deeming city enhancement as graffiti(the Granville underpass 100 sculpture), we must take a moment to ponder the times which are a' changin'. History repeats itself, this is indeed one of the glorious cliches of our species. Like the rebirth of Japanese democracy or the rebirth of painting naked ladies, one must attempt to extricate something meaningful and sentimental out of the vast spectrum of 'abstract art'.

I would like to reference a figure that despite achieving comparably lesser fame than flashy New York fat cats of the early 1900's, had impacted the art realm much more than institutionally credited. This man's name is Bart van der Leck. Born in Utrecht (Netherlands) in 1876, Van der Leck became a practicing, interdisciplinary artist by the turn of the century. Van der Leck had spent his life, much like so many other artists developing a distinctive visual language, which with the input from fellow Netherlanders Theo Van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian and Vilmos Haszar formed De Stijl.

Van Der Leek concluded that having 'abstracted' content, form and composition, he should start doing the same with colour to achieve further synthesis in his work. He therefore started to reduce the natural colours to their principal primary components and from then on painted exclusively in the unmixed colours red, yellow and blue and the non-colours black and white. The guiding principle in this process throughout the years was a striving towards simplification, generalisation and synthesis. Van der Leck literally 'abstracted' various aspects of his paintings and representations to make the content more universal.

Van Der Leck was a humble man, choosing the inglorious lifestyle of craft arts over fine art though his vision was clear; The essence of art must be incorporated into architecture, design and most elements of every day life. Falling within striking context of this website and our personal affiliations, let us remember Mr. Bart Van Der Leck as the benefactor of minimal, truly 'Primed Out' abstraction. Here's to this vision and to new beginnings. Bellow are some examples of Van Der Leck's oil paintings(1900-1958).