User:Benfo-Dutch

Benfo was a co-operation between two Dutch contemporary painters Ben Vollers and Fons Heijnsbroek who paint together from time to time till 2010. We both practice abstract-expressionistic painting since 1990 and have had many picture-shows together. We live and work in Amsterdam and know each other since 1992. We argue and discuss our new-created paintings frequently.

Since 2006 we started to paint together on one canvas - spontaneously and directly; it is comparable with jamming in the modern jazz. Besides this 'paint-jamming' we both make our individual paintings. Moreover together we frequently discuss all kind of texts, art movies and quotes from artists of abstract art and abstract-expressionism. We use them as material for our discussions and to understand our own art better. These discussions were was the first start for me to collect many famous artist quotes, as fuel for my artistic development. Later I started to appreciate the collected artist quotes as a good source to understand more of the development of modern art.

The famous artist quotes which I collected during these years will be placed on the English Wikiquote and Wikipedia by me, Fons Heijnsbroek, under the account User:Benfo-Dutch. So I hope that other people and art-lovers will also re-discover and re-understand the typical 'art-kitchen' of modern art. It is after all in the midst of the communities of artists where modern art grows, exchanges and finds its new forms!

Some thoughts on collecting quotes of artists
'''In art there exists a special kind of thinking, of reflections, because the thoughts of artists are strongly connected with form and the materials to express them, and with the question how to built visual shapes. This connection marks very deeply the character and the intention of the ideas artists make. Also the sensitivity of the artist is strongly influenced by this relation, because it is the world with its phenomena and evolution full of its changing faces, which gives ideas to create. For instance Fernand Leger was very aware of the way riding in a car in the 1920's did influence his perception of the landscape. And some decades later it is Willem de Kooning who recognizes in the American highways a new kind of landscape, which gives him inspiration to find a new attitude to it. Even most theoretical artists as Joseph Beuys or Yves Klein are forced to go ‘down to earth’ with their speculations, as they try to connect their speculative thinkings with an image, or a sculpture or an object. Ideas in art by artists have always a kind of practical intention. Their thoughts don't come together easily in a theory or in a critic or analyses; their thoughts do not form a complete verbal 'picture', and in that way the artists themselvers feel a little uncomfortable in how to connect their ideas all together. In some way their verbal thinking is a labyrinth, but a labyrinth full of connections, associations, bridges which connect the ideas.'''