La Grande Parade

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Highlights in Painting after 1940
15.12.1984 – 15.4.1985

Organisation exhibition
Edy de Wilde, Karel Schampers, Alexander van Grevenstein, Hendrik Driessen

This is the first ever art exhibition i remember visiting. I was still studying in Delft. A year later i would go to art School in Rotterdam.

I remember being surrounded by red. Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue by Barnett Newman. The first time i saw Giacometti, Fautrier. The later paintings from Georges Braque were exquisite. It was all new, beautiful, breathtaking to me. I knew Mondriaan, of course. But i had never seen these paintings before.

I found a review from the New York Times: ART: ‘GRANDE PARADE,’ AT THE STEDELIJK, published December 27, 1984. It is set in its time, of course. It is a white male exhibition. I didn’t think about that at all when i visited it.

I bought the catalogue. I am including photos from the pages. Better than looking up the images online. This sets the paintings in their proper surrounding.

These are the painters i picked, who stayed with me. Some grew, others diminished. My taste changed. Of course.

Still, even though the memories are vague, this exhibition has stayed with me. I don’t even remember if i went alone or together with someone else. The only real memory i have is the one from the Barnett Newman painting. Ooh, and Philip Guston. Not that i really liked his work, i didn’t. But that changed over the years!