FEATURES ARCHIVE

The Last Work
The Untitled relief from 1992 is the very last work Jan Schoonhoven ever produced. Not very long after it was finished he died. Not just because of this poignant fact, do I think that it is a fantastic and important work. Also because it seems to accumulate all that Schoonhoven stood for in his artistic oeuvre. He aimed to unveil the beauties of modern reality, and not to comment on it, or even moralize it. As a true ‘Zero’ artist, the movement he helped to found in the 1960s, Schoonhoven was of the opinion that a bridge should be built between art and society in an impersonal way, without involving any emotion. Jan Schoonhoven was to become the artist that would work most consistently in this manner. Schoonhoven concentrated on his famous oeuvre of white papier-mâché compositions, only after five o'clock in the afternoon. Until his retirement he had a full position with the PTT (the Dutch post). Similar as in his art, he had a compulsory need for regularity and order in his life and out of sheer necessity he hung on to it for such a long time.

The Beauty of Modern Life
It was never Schoonhoven’s goal to create new kinds of forms. His reliefs can, for example, consist of deductions from wall grills, or Venetian blinds. In the spirit of Zero he wished to show us the beauties of modern life. This work is part of a series of four compositions in which he reinvented his famous corrugated cardboard reliefs in a surprisingly new way. They are no longer built up with strips of corrugated cardboard, but literally consist of thousands of cardboard triangles, which – piled together – form massive, vertical, sharply protruding ridges (here there are exactly 10.360 triangles). It is a beautiful example of the theories of the Zero movement, to which he adhered until the very last moments, and at the same time a very personal expression. He could have chosen a much easier method of working, instead of the thousands of triangles. As a result of this the ‘skin’ of the work became very personal, exciting and non-mechanical in character, and thus the whole work. Schoonhoven at his best.