SikkensFoundation

Publications

JOOST BALJEU: TOMORROW IT COULD BE ARCHI- TECTURE, 1975 — The need to restore the lost balance between man and nature and between art and nature was important for Joost Baljeu (1925-1991) and many concrete artists who published in the journal Structure, which was published from 1958 to 1964. In his work, Baljeu aimed to express a structural process of growth which was parallel to that in nature, and in which he saw a synthesis of art and na- ture. He believed that natural forms were created by means of a process of interrelated forces. Therefore Bal- jeu considered that the artist should not focus on the ex- ternal characteristics of a form, but on the growth proces- ses on which it is based. Organic growth processes could be expressed particularly by means of mathemati- cal formulae. Baljeu and the other artists of Structure be- lieved that by ensuring that their work process was paral- lel to the growth processes in nature, they could promote the creation of a new and harmonious world. Baljeu did not consider the human mind superior to material reality. In this respect, he considered that Mondrian’s attitude to nature was too arbitrary and he therefore went back to the French cubist Albert Gleizes, and later to Van Does- burg’s ideas on time and space and the fourth dimension in order to express the dynamic character of nature. Spa- tial constructions such as reliefs and free standing statu- es played an increasingly important role in his work be- cause the relationship with the dynamic growth process in nature was expressed better in these works than on the two-dimensional surface of a painting.Back to index