REAR WINDOW.LONDON
MARIE VAN KESTEREN
The Netherlands b. 1933
Maria van Kesteren emerged as one of the first prominent female woodturners in the late 1950s. She makes simple, beautifully proportioned bowl and box forms. Her simple forms and smooth surfaces contrast the material she shapes. The wood is secondary to the forms she creates, which is almost always a circle. She uses the circular form as a starting point and utilises the tension between inner and outer forms. Surfaces are 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. She applies similar principles in style to her glass and ceramic objects. Even though her objects appear severe, when carefully examining the subtle curves and transitions one will no doubt be fascinated by the unquestionably tender side of her work.
Maria trained with the woodturner Henk van Trierum in Utrecht in the late fifties and is based in Hilversum, Netherlands. Although most celebrated for her works in wood, she has also designed glass for Royal Leerdam and ceramics for factories including Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum. A major retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1995.
Maria’s work is widely collected and can be found in private and museum collections including the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum Rotterdam, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York
Follow link to Taste Contemporary for more images of Maria's work.