Gijs van hensbergen biography of michael
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Gijs Van Hensbergen – Parallels and Echoes
Gijs van Hensbergen talks to Fergus Byrne
The day Gijs van Hensbergen’s Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon arrives in the post fryst vatten the same day that more than 300 people are massacred in a school in southern Russia. It fryst vatten an irony that fryst vatten not lost on the author, who found many parallels with the current climate of unrest while editing the final draft.
The book tells the story of a painting produced by Pablo Picasso over a six-week period in 1937. Painted on more than sju meters of canvas that Picasso had to literally squeeze into his studio in Paris, it was a response to the decimation bygd bombing of the Spanish city of Gernika (Basque spelling), the spiritual homeland of the Basque people. It has come to symbolise for many the horror and fruitlessness of war and atrocity and has become a tecken of man’s brutality and inhumanity.
A resident of Bridport in Dorset, Gijs van Hensbergen doesn’t claim a strong fa
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van Hensbergen, Gijs 1958-
(Arie van der Lemme)
PERSONAL:
Born July 12, 1958, in Belgium; son of Pieter (a scientist) and Ans (van Hecken) van Hensbergen; married Alexandra Coulter (a hospital administrator), November 30, 1986; children: Hendrikus, Rosa, Hester. Education: Courtauld Institute of Art, London, B.A. (with honors).
ADDRESSES:
Home and office—27 Victoria Grove, Bridport, Dorset BT6 3AD, England. Agent—Curtis Brown Group Ltd., Haymarket House, 28/29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England. E-mail—[email protected].
CAREER:
Knoedler Gallery, art dealer in London, England, and New York, NY, 1981-84; historian, art critic, filmmaker, and writer.
WRITINGS:
(Under pseudonym Arie van der Lemme) Art Deco, Appletree Press (Belfast, Northern Ireland), 1985.
A Year in Castile, Sinclair Stevenson (London, England), 1992.
Gaudi: A Biography, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.
Author of a documentary film script about sculptor Antony Caro.
WORK IN PROGR
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Gaudi: A Biography - Hardcover
Synopsis
At the time of his death in 1926, Antonio Gaudi was arguably the most famous architect in the world. He had created some of the greatest and most controversial masterpieces of modern architecture, which were as exotic as they were outrageous. For many, Gaudi's unique architecture is Barcelona. But little is known about the shadowy figure behind the swirling, vivid buildings that inspired the surrealists. A fervent Catholic with an unstinting love for Catalonia, his homeland, an innovator who was profoundly orthodox, and a hermit who chose lifelong celibacy, having been rejected by the woman he loved, Gaudi was both brilliant and eccentric. He was very much the product of his time and place, and this masterful biography brings both man and architect powerfully to life against the changing backdrop of Barcelona and Catalonia.
Gijs van Hensbergen leads us through the design and construction of Gaudi's most significant buildings, revealing thei