Meertje Kaal - Odysseusboot II | kleuren zeefdruk (13/75) - ingelijst - Sold

Beautiful colorful screen print by Meertje Kaal (1930-2016). Some affinities with the CoBrA movement can be discerned in her rich and versatile oeuvre.
Title: Odysseus Boat II
Year: 1995
Edition: 13 of 75
Signed by hand (pencil) lower right; manually provided with title and edition at the bottom left.
The top is in a solid aluminum frame with hanging wire and can therefore be mounted on the wall!
Photos are part of the description.

About the artist:
Born in 1930 as Maartje Kaal, but became known as Meertje Kaal.
Painter, textile artist, collagist and poet.
Meertje Kaal grew up in a working-class environment in North Holland. Her great idol was uncle Jaap Kaal, a painter. After the war, Kaal left for Paris, where she worked in the household for artists such as Serge Poliakoff. Back in Amsterdam her goal was to become a sewing artist, which was not easy because at that time modern art was still mainly for men.
Kaal was activist and committed. At the end of the sixties she and others occupied the Stedelijk Museum because the museum paid too little attention to contemporary Dutch art. When some artists were banned from the Visual Artists Scheme (BKR), under which artists received a benefit in exchange for works of art, Kaal and a few other artists occupied the BKR depot in The Hague. In addition, she was a member – and briefly treasurer – of the Professional Association of Visual Artists (BBK) for many years. In her neighbourhood, the Kinkerbuurt, she took action with the BBK to prevent impoverishment. In the early 1970s she founded the political-cultural publishing house SoMa with her friend, the poet Sonja Prins, and in 1972 she became a member of the artists' society De Kring.
Bald led a tumultuous life where drink often played a major role. Nevertheless, she wrote 14 collections of poems and made hundreds of paintings. In the late fifties she started to make 'paintings' of patches. Only in 1960, after the death of her 'teacher' uncle Jaap, did she really start painting. After she felt she had worked for years in the shadow of men, she started to achieve success as an independent artist: from around 1985 the sales of her paintings started to run. Inspired by the work of Joan Miró that she had seen in Barcelona, she made colorful paintings in which she often processed waste. Women and animals, mostly cats, were grateful subjects.

According to experts, her work is reminiscent of the Cobra movement. Although there was always criticism, Kaal's work was taken more and more seriously towards the end of her life. It is present in the collection of, among others, Museum Flehite in Amersfoort, art gallery De Bleyenhoeve, Westerlee; Ahold Art Foundation, Zaandam and Artzaanstad, Zaandam.

Sources: www.artzaanstad.nl // www.aandeamstel.nl // www.http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/