Maria Van Kesteren

Maria van Kesteren applies her woodworking skills to the articulation of pure form. She is uninterested in the ‘natural’ irregularities of wood - strong grains, knots or burls - finding these to be unhelpfully distracting and at odds with her intentions. Her raw materials are most usually lime, elm and sycamore, selected for the dense quality of their workable substance.

The resulting objects - spare and beautifully proportioned bowl and box forms - are based on the circle, convex and concave curves. The final surface is evenly stained or painted so that the detail of the grain becomes secondary to their formal properties and fine definitions of interior and exterior space.

Born in 1933, Maria van Kesteren trained with the woodturner Henk van Trierum in Utrecht in the late fifties. She is based in Hilversum, Netherlands. Although celebrated for her works in wood, she has also designed glass for Royal Leerdam and ceramics for factories such as Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum. A major retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1995.

publications

Please click Publications for a list of illustrated exhibition leaflets and other related literature available from Barrett Marsden Gallery

limited editions

please see newly launched limited editions by Barrett Marsden Gallery artists

email: info@bmgallery.co.uk

link to collections

Contemporary Art Society, London
The Mint Museum, Charlotte NC
Stichting Francoise van den Bosch