Marinus Boezem

Marinus Lambertus van den Boezem (born 28 January 1934) is a Dutch artist. He is known for his radical view of art and his works in public space. Together with Wim T. Schippers, Ger van Elk and Jan Dibbets, Boezem is seen as one of the main representatives of conceptual art and arte povera in the Netherlands in the late 1960s.

Boezem was born in Leerdam. In 1954, he entered the Vrije Academie Artibus in Utrecht, but he left after a year to continue his studies at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. At the Academie, his interests lay mostly in works on the flat surface. In the 1950s, he worked as a drawer and painter. In the 1960s, his work became more spatial. He started to work on non-material works, sculptures, spatial objects and works in public space and he became known and respected by a growing public. Boezems work is unmistakably rooted in the 1960s, when Nouveau Réalisme in Europe and Pop Art in America had a great influence on many artists. Like the Nouveau Réalistes, Boezem and other Dutch artists such as Ger van Elk, Jan Dibbets, Wim T. Schippers and Willem de Ridder were opposed to art that was spiritual, outside society and based on craftsmanship. Boezems works often contain non-artistic objects and parts of landscapes. Some of his works comprise only an idea or a proposal for an object. The proposals consisted of spatial sculptures made of air and other materials, such as cotton wool and reeds, hardly ever used for art. Like a businessman Boezem carried his proposals in a briefcase and travelled to museums and galeries to sell them. Like his contemporaries Boezem strove to bring art outside the walls of the museum. Many of his works were not suitable to be placed in a museum. In 1960 Boezem exhibited part of a polder as a ready made. With this artwork he presented himself for the first time as a 'conceptual' artist.

From the mid-1970s, Boezem began to work out his conceptual ideas in sculpture. In his sculptures the role of the environment played an important role. Themes as air, light, sound and movement, which were the central themes in his early work, remainend leading motives in his sculptures. In the 1970s teaching became also an important part of Boezem's activities. Out of an idealistic belief in art for everyone, and scepticism about the art world, he devoted himself to what was then called 'non-formal education'. In the 1980s he worked on several major projects in which the landscape plays an important role. His greatest and most important project in this period is The Green Cathedral (1978–1987). For this artwork 174 Italian poplars have been planted in a polderlandscape in Flevoland. The trees reproduce the floorplan of the Gothic Cathedral of Reims. Many of Boezem's spatial work can be placed in the tradition of Land Art. Motifs such as landscapes, space, climate, light, air and cartography play a central role in Boezem's work. In the 1990s he made several video works, but also many sculptures in public space.

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