As a photographer, Jan Dibbets also refers to the tradition of painting and sees himself as a painter, not a photographic artist. The Dutch conceptual artist does not want to use his camera to depict reality, but to gain new perspectives from imagination and spirit.
(...) Continue readingJan Dibbets - New artistic paths far removed from academic teaching
Jan Dibbets was born on 9th May 1941 in Weert in the Netherlands. Once he had decided to pursue art, he quickly realised that he could not make the necessary progress in his home country and went to England, where he attended the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. During that time, he met artists such as Richard Long, Barry Flanagan and George Passmore, who had not yet teamed up with his later partner Gilbert Prousch. All of these now big names had not yet achieved their breakthrough at that point, but Jan Dibbets felt that the exchange with these interesting personalities helped him advance. The unconventional way of thinking, the deliberate distance from academic teaching, all this fascinated Dibbets, who also wished to break new ground. Chance came to his aid: when he wanted to hitchhike to Germany in 1966, two young men picked him up, who turned out to be the gallery owners Paul Maenz and Peter Roehr. They invited Dibbets to take part in a planned exhibition on serial formations and the journey ended up at a different destination than originally planned.
Photography as a new medium changes the world
In 1967, Jan Dibbets gave up painting, which he had studied under Jan Greegor in Eindhoven and with which he had begun his artistic career. On his return from London, he incorporated the theories of Land Art, which he had learnt from Richard Long and others, into his new concepts and chose the camera as his most important tool. Dibbets experimented with perspective, played with light, and developed a new understanding of space. The artist took a particular interest in time, the passage of which he made visible and tangible with astonishingly simple artistic means. In 1972, he created the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale and thus achieved international fame. For Dibbets, photography has changed the world, but in his opinion, it is far too often used only for reproduction and documentation; instead, it should be understood as a new medium and with which to create something new in art.
Decades of collaboration with Konrad Fischer
Jan Dibbets found a friend and gallery owner in Konrad Fischer, who accompanied him on his artistic career for several decades, with the exhibition on the occasion of the artist's 80th birthday a highlight and the conclusion of the collaboration. Dibbets took part in the Documenta in Kassel three times (1972, 1977 and 1982) and held a professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1984 to 2004. In 1994, Jan Dibbets marked the prime meridian of Paris with 135 plaques in honour of the physicist François Arago. After the hitherto little-noticed artwork played an important role in the novel Sacrilege by Dan Brown, the so-called Arago Medallions became so popular that some of them were even stolen. His works can be seen in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Museum De Pont in Tilburg, among others.
Jan Dibbets lives and works in Amsterdam.
Jan Dibbets - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
