Galery Waalkens is a Dutch

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

for the international

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

Finsterwolde Finsterwolde () is a village in the Dutch province of Groningen, about 7 km northeast of the city of Winschoten. Finsterwolde was a separate municipality until 1990, when it was merged with Beerta into Reiderland. In 2010 Reiderland merged ...

founded by Albert Waalkens in 1962.Galeriehouder Albert Waalkens overleden
" ''

De Telegraaf ''De Telegraaf'' (; ) is the largest Netherlands, Dutch daily morning newspaper. Haro Kraak,Gaat Paul Jansen de crisis bij De Telegraaf oplossen?, ''de Volkskrant'', 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2015. Paul Jansen has been the editor-in-chief since ...

,'' 4 april 2007. (

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

)

History

The art gallery had started by Albert Waalkens in the

stable A stable is a building in which working animals are kept, especially horses or oxen. The building is usually divided into stalls, and may include storage for equipment and feed. Styles There are many different types of stables in use tod ...

of his farm in 1962, where artists and their families mainly from the

Randstad The Randstad (; "Rim City" or "Edge City") is a roughly crescent- or Circular arc, arc-shaped conurbation in the Netherlands, that includes almost half the country's population. With a central-western location, it connects and comprises the Net ...

could also shelter. The gallery offered a podium for young experimental

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

s. The gallery came into prominence with some

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibiti ...

s along the public road. It started in ten statues in 1963 around the village of Finsterwolde, and evolved the 1967 exhibition along the public road with 200 sculptures by 63 artists. This exhibition stretched from the city of

Groningen Groningen ( , ; ; or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen (province), Groningen province in the Netherlands. Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of ...

to the east of the province. In 1984 Gunnar Daan come into prominence with an exhibition at the gallery.Hans Oldewarris, Peter de Winter, ''20 Years 010.'' 2003. p. 219. In 2008 he made the design for the new building of the gallery. In 1988 the art curator Poul ter Hofstede in cooperation with the

Groninger Museum The Groninger Museum () is an art museum in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. The museum exhibits modern and contemporary art of local, national, and international artists. The museum opened in 1874. The current post-modernist building c ...

published a retrospective on the gallery with a chronological listing of the exhibitions. In the year 2000 Waalkens was awarded the Benno Premsela Prize by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts for his stimulating attitude towards artists. In the new millennium the son and former PvdA member of parliament Harm Evert Waalkens continued the gallery, and by 2014 his daughter Merel and her husband continued the tradition. In 2017 the Stichting Beeldlijn completed a new documentary about the gallery and visual art in Groningen, entitled ''Boer tussen kunst en koren.''

Exhibitions, a selection

* 1963. ''Beelden in Finsterwolde'', open air exhibition. * 1978. ''Movement in Dark'' by

Nan Hoover Nan Hoover (May 12, 1931 – June 9, 2008) was a Netherlands, Dutch/American-expatriate artist who is known for her pioneering work in video art, photography and performance art. She spent almost four decades living and working in the Netherlands.< ...

* 1984. Works of

Gunnar Daan Gunnar is a male first name of Nordic origin (''Gunnarr'' in Old Norse). The name Gunnar means fighter, soldier, and attacker, but mostly is referred to by the Viking saying which means Brave and Bold warrior (''gunnr'' "war" and ''arr'' "warrior ...

. * 1987. Works by

Ruud Kuijer Ruud Kuijer (born 8 June 1959 in Schalkwijk, Utrecht, Schalkwijk) is a Dutch sculptor, particularly known for his ''Water works'', a group of seven large-scale sculptures on the strip between Isotopenweg and the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal in Utrecht, T ...

* 1994. ''It's in the Air'' by

Felix Hess Felix Hess (20 June 1878 – 9 April 1943) was a Dutch painter. He studied at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. His teachers included . He was a member of Arti et Amicitiae and . His work was part of the painting event in t ...

.
Ons erfdeel
'' Volume 49. 2006. p. 668.

Photo Gallery

Some examples of the type of works of the artists, that had presented their works at the Galery Waalkens. File:Nan Hoover “The Ls” Object.jpg, ''The Ls'' by

, realized in 1990 in

Hardenberg Hardenberg (; or '' 'n Arnbarg'') is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Overijssel, Eastern Netherlands. The municipality of ...

Railway Station image:Waterwerk_II_Bearable_Lightness_(2003).jpg, ''Water Work II Bearable Lightness'' by

realization in 2003 File:Gunnar daan stadsmarkering gn.JPG, ''City marking'' by

, realization in 2006

Publications

* Poul ter Hofstede, ''Conformeren aan de Avant-Garde, 25 jaar Galerie Waalkens.'' Groningen: Groninger Museum, 1988. * Susan Rijke & Lidy Visser,
Archief Galerie Waalkens
', Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis 2014.

References

External links

Kunstboer Waalkens: ‘Koeien eruit, kunst erin’
on deverhalenvangroningen.nl (in Dutch) {{DEFAULTSORT:Waalkens Dutch art dealers