For our 11th participation in Art Rotterdam Dürst Britt & Mayhew is proudly presenting a transhistorical and intercultural dialogue between Dutch modernist artist Willem Hussem (1900-1974) and Mexican artist Alejandra Venegas (1986).
A series of new woodcarvings by Alejandra Venegas will be juxtaposed with historical works by Willem Hussem from different periods of his artistic career - not only from the 1960s and 1950s, but also from the 1940s and even the 1920s.
Alejandra Venegas hand-carves landscape scenes and natural motives from various sorts of wood native to Mexico, after which she colours them with gouache or oil. Uniting the natural, warm tones of the wood with stridently bright shades is a contrast she actively seeks for. Incorporating the natural irregularities of the wood makes it much more than just a panel to paint on and gives the work a definite sculptural character. For Venegas, these works have therefore become a meeting place between painting, sculpture and drawing, but also between nature and culture, the exterior and the interior.
Willem Hussem is commonly known as a modernist painter and poet, but the first half of his life he worked in a figurative way. In 1924 he experimented with a style that could be described as stylised symbolism. This resulted in a series of woodcuts that mainly depict abstracted floral and landscape motives. Because this series remained the only time Hussem engaged in abstraction until 1936, it can be considered as a unique preliminary to his later work. Also on show is a rare series of paintings from 1967, whose shapes are slightly reminiscent of the spirals Alexander Calder used in his work. These enter into an intriguing dialogue with the roots and leaves depicted in Alejandra Venegas’ woodcarvings.
Dürst Britt & Mayhew presented Willem Hussem solo at TEFAF Maastricht in 2024 and Alejandra Venegas solo at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2023.
