Material Oil on canvas
Dimensions 139.8 x 130 cm
Place of Creation The Netherlands
Status Vetted

About the Work

Constant is one of Holland’s most important and innovative artists from post-war times. He was co-founder of the international CoBrA movement, the initiator and inventor of his visionary New Babylon projects in the fifties and sixties, a revolutionary artist in the seventies during the Vietnam war, but also a vibrant, almost romantic colourist in his major late paintings. After his time as co-founder of the painters’ movement CoBrA (1948-1952) Constant left for London, witnessing there the urban development challenges and also the solutions for this war ravaged city. He met Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Victor Pasmore among others. His London residency remains crucial for his future work in which architecture plays a key role.


Back in The Netherlands he worked with the architects Aldo van Eyck and Gerrit Rietveld. He likewise fostered and maintained his many international contacts, which also included those with the Danish artist Asger Jorn. Constant became ever more convinced that a new social and cultural order will advance the cause of humanity. His visionary spirit anticipated that the automation of production will provide mankind with increasing amounts of free time (thereby creating scope for the “Homo Ludens”, the man who is playful and creative) and that this futuristic view would become feasible in what, from 1960, was to be known as New Babylon. This vision would dominate his oeuvre from that moment on making drawings, models, photo collages, plans, constructions and paintings. In addition, he substantiated New Babylon with numerous written works, talks and lectures in various countries.The social and political turbulence of the sixties threatened to turn New Babylon into a utopia: the New Babylon project stopped in 1974.


Like so many artists worldwide, Constant was deeply concerned by the Vietnam war, changing his artistic direction into a more revolutionary and political way. He created collages and works on paper, as well as impressive paintings which he will continue to do during the Balkan war of the early nineties.


Happening was exhibited at:

Paris, Galerie Daniel Gervis, Constant, peintures recentes, 30 October -30 November 1974;

Amsterdam, Galerie Collection d' Art, Schilderijen en aquarellen , Constant, 20 March- 29 April 1976;

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Constant, Schilderijen 1969-77, 17 March – 7 May 1978, no. 9 (ill.cat.);

The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Constant Schilderijen 1940 – 1980, 27 September – 24 November 1980 (sticker on the stretcher, not in catalogue);

Antibes, Musée Picasso, Constant, une rétrospective , 30 June- 15 October 2001, no. 56 (colour ill.cat. on p. 108).

Show moreless

Provenance

Galerie Daniel Gervis, Paris
Tom Okker Art, Hazerswoude
Collection ProWinko, The Netherlands

Literature

Mark Wigely, Constant's New Babylon. The hyper-architecture of desire, Rotterdam 1998, p. 227 (colour ill.)
Jean-Clarence Lambert, Constant. L'atelier d'Amsterdam, Paris 2000, p..40, no. 7
Mark Wigley, Constant dialogue, in, WORK, BODY, LEISURE, published in conjunction with the Dutch Pavilion of the
Biennale Architectura 2018, Rotterdam/Berlin 2018

View artwork at TEFAF Maastricht 2025

View Full Floorplan