09-07-2024 - Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle and Heino/Wijhe has received a large donation from the collection of Pieter and Marieke Sanders.
Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle and Heino/Wijhe has received a large donation from the collection of Pieter and Marieke Sanders. The donation comprises 60 photographic works from the large collection of art they gathered together over 40 years. The donation consists of a large number of works of Finnish photography.
Finnish photographers in this large donation are: Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Ilkka Halso, Antti Laitinen, Ari Kakkinen, Aino Kanisto, Susanna Majuri, Jorma Puranen and Axel Antas. The works are now on display in the exhibition Northern light: nature photography, curated by guest curator Maarten Bertheux. This extremely generous donation was the reason for this special project, which focuses on the Northern light - the characteristic light in the photographs of Finnish makers, but also the light of the north-eastern part of the Netherlands where Marieke Sanders herself has her roots.
Marieke Sanders: 'Originally from Drenthe, I think it is important that good, innovative art is also accessible to a wide audience in the north of our country. My donation of Finnish photography gave the museum the opportunity to take a new direction. And they have done a great job in putting together, together with works from their own collection, a fantastic exhibition with 'Northern light: nature photography'.
Beatrice von Bormann, director-director Museum de Fundatie: 'We accept this donation with great gratitude and we celebrate the fantastic addition to our collection with this exhibition and publication. I sincerely thank Marieke Sanders-ten Holte and her family for her generous donation and attitude, for her commitment to the creators and to this exhibition and thus to our museum.'
Collection Sanders
Pieter (1938 - 2018) and Marieke Sanders have spent more than forty years marvelling at the current work of both young and as yet unknown, as well as established artists from home and abroad. Their collection is very diverse and includes paintings, works on paper, small plastic, photographs, video works and nfts . The emphasis is on innovative and conceptual work. Through their signalling purchases, the collection now brings together three generations of artists. In recent years, Pieter and Marieke Sanders have already donated selections from the collection of contemporary art to five different Dutch art museums.
In the interview by Edo Dijksterhuis in the catalogue, Marieke Sanders-ten Holte says: 'We don't have a collection plan or collection policy. One way or another, you mirror the art you buy. It touches on subjects you are consciously or unconsciously involved with. For instance, much of our art is about water, sky, clouds and man's relationship to nature - also in the form of manipulation.' In this way, they also came into contact with the photographers from The Helsinki School, who studied at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki (UIAH) from the 1990s.
The Helsinki School
The Finnish photographers in the Sanders couple's collection are mostly from the so-called The Helsinki School. The Helsinki School was founded in the early 1990s out of Aalto University/Espoo. Besides focusing on the landscape, with its distinctive bright (northern) light, students at this university were encouraged to experiment within the photographic process and develop new concepts for themes such as the transience of time, interventions by or the presence of man in nature leading to narrative scenes. Most of them see nature as something unpredictable and instead of suppressing nature, they instead embrace the unreliability of the landscape to strengthen our relationship with nature.
Photo: Marieke Sanders and Beatrice von Bormann at one of the works in the donation: Susanna Majuri, High Tide, 2006
