(Delft 1914–1994)
R 87–3, 1987, signed, titled, dated and inscribed on the reverse Jan J. Schoonhoven 1987, there with the measurements, cardboard, latex paint, wood, 42 x 24 x 4.8 cm mounted in plexiglass box

We are grateful to Antoon Melissen, Amsterdam/Berlin for his scientific assistance in cataloguing this work. The work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Jan Schoonhoven’s Reliefs.

Provenance:
Galerie m, Bochum - directly from the artist
acquired there from the previous owner

Since the early 1980s, Jan Schoonhoven has let himself be influenced by his most immediate surroundings in the generation of ideas for his works – namely, the historical centre of his home town of Delft. Jan Schoonhoven wanders through the town, using his index finger and thumb as a means of framing the image, searching for suitable motifs. He makes note of the canals, the gables of specific houses, the historic house roofs, the smallest details of the town that are of particular interest for him, and the towers and façades that are formed in an unusual manner: all of these are then photographed by his colleague Aad in t‘Veld.
Schoonhoven declares that reliefs such as R 87-3, in their rhythmic and concrete form, accurately come close again to the prototypes of the ZERO artworks. As early as 1965 he himself wrote in ‘De nieuwe stijl’: ‘Accepting things as they are and not changing them for personal reasons, making changes only when they are necessary to depict reality more intensively’.
Here ‘intentional’ geometry and the geometry of ‘chance’ meet, in a calculated model that can nonetheless be traced back to ‘reflections’, to roofs and building fronts, to ripples in water and houses mirrored in canals. This work exudes ‘Delft’, even though the direct link to the original has been severed. The relief is a simulacrum, a copy without an original, functioning as an autonomous creation.”
Antoon Melissen, Jan Schoonhoven, Rotterdam 2015, p. 162