World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 519 - Netty van Osch

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 519 – Netty van Osch

Netty van Osch was one of the artists in the group exhibition “OE!” by Galerie Mishmash in Rotterdam. Under a painting of a clown, accompanied on the left and right by a black sculpture, I saw distinct ceramic heads of, successively, a girl with red hair, bloodshot eyes and a distorted mouth in a bowl, a bust of a sullen-looking boy with blue eyes and a fur collar with knives sticking out of his head like a kind of halo and a crying, screaming boy with two grenades on his forehead like horns.

It all looked quite intense.

At the same time, her work was on display in the exhibition ‘shadow of a cloud’ in Galerie De Doelen 2 on the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam. It was an installation that was best viewed from outside in the display window. In the installation were two leaning figures, one with a blue face, the other pale as death with a shovel in his hand. The blue figure wore a fur hat, the other a tuft of hair on his head, both had two holes in their foreheads, upon closer inspection they turned out to be geodes, stones with crystal inside like broken off horns.

Then there were a lot of shovels against a number of cushions and on the far right a horse (the Kuna Centaur). A portrait with rabbit ears was stuck in the horse.

The installation is called ‘digging’ with the explanatory text: ‘Netty shows in her images a parallel world where contrasts and possibilities, choice and fate, game and competition alternate or result in a duel. These are often installations in which the playing field is central.’

Universal biography

I wanted to know more about that. I made an appointment with her to visit her studio on the Lange Hilleweg in Rotterdam-Zuid.

The studio, a former classroom, is large and looks tidy. Netty tells her story and illustrates it with all kinds of books, brochures and photos.

Her work is a Universal Autobiography. “Universal, because I am convinced that the emotions I give shape to can also be recognized by the viewer.”

She calls this Universal Autobiography `the land of Polymorph’. The autobiography began with the statuette ‘I’ in 1994, a shrunken version of her own head. “It happened by accident. At the time I was working with projections and film and I wondered, ‘can I meet myself?’ I had a plaster cast made of my head and projected slides and film of myself onto it. After a session of ‘casting a head’ the mould appeared to have shrunk and I cast it again. An egg-head was created, a kind of bean that I ‘fantasized’ I could plant and grow. I made `I have my tools’, a figure with roots coming out of its nose, a rake and a shovel for hands, so that it can bury itself and grow.

The Garden of Old Paper

She says: “The land of POlymorph, the Universal Garden, started at the Academy without me knowing it by the way. At the Royal Academy of Art and Design in Den Bosch, where I started in ’83, teacher Corrie de Boer from the Monumental department came up with the assignment `make your family in paper`.” “I didn’t have much to do with ‘family’, so I had to show that I didn’t care much for family, and I decided to start working in waste paper. To collect paper I went to the municipal company ‘waste processing paper’ in Den Bosch and got bags full of waste paper. I made paper without colour. In a laid out garden (an oval of 3 X 1.5 metres) of waste paper I took out the uncoloured pieces of paper, as a kind of ritual. I was wearing a paper harness and on my head a very large ball (diameter: skippy ball size) of coloured paper with an uncoloured part in between, all made of papier-mâché. With a torch I burned away the uncoloured from my garden and head and then I took off the harness. The recording was a film of the performance, which unfortunately got lost.”

“At the municipal paper sorting belt I saw a beautiful scene: the men who worked there found hundreds of dolls and stuffed animals among the old paper, but also voluptuous women from porn magazines that they had hung up as trophies. I later processed the overwhelming impression of that completely wallpapered wall into an installation `quarrel in abundance`, a large mountain of knitted stuffed animals with two men dressed in black who are screaming for the same teddy bear.”

PO and Kuna

She still works with that garden, it is ‘The land of POlymorph’ with two stylistic figures: ‘PO’ and ‘Kuna’. “PO stands for the common, a cooperating being (pawns) and Kuna stands for king (rabbit), the individual, a monarch who strives for power.”

“We are all rulers of our own universe, everyone has the monarch `Kuna` living inside him. PO is us as a group together. PO and Kuna live in duel, but PO does that for all and with Kuna it is about him alone. He wants to rule and for that he is prepared to plunder and kill.”

She depicts the conflict in installations, sometimes with a playing floor as terrain or a garden. She shows a black heart, which is given a place on the playing floor. “The black heart stands for everything that is dark, everything you can argue about.”

How did she achieve those typical faces, often sullen, grumpy, aggressive, grumpy?

The work begins with a photo portrait, she says. She shows the portrait of a somewhat sullen farm boy. “A beautiful, reliable face.” She calls him `Trust`. He has been modeled in clay as best as possible. “I am looking for the emotion that the photo portrait shows. He has been given a black jacket and pig ears. For a long time I did not know who he was until I saw that the ears show a samurai hood, I knew that I had to heavily arm `Trust` as a border guard of Polymorph.”

She discovered a photo book from 1947 by a Belgian monk, a friar, Dionysius van Ruytegem. She shows me the book, I see several innocent looking children, but beautiful photos. “Those children did not know photography at the time. They look into the camera without inhibition and prejudice, that purity is what I seek for my portraits. Incidentally, they are not children to me but supporters and form the basis of my objects.”

She sculpts by hand. “I build hollow and form a pot, I work from the inside and the outside.” In 2000 she worked for four weeks in Art Museum Studio Kecskemét in Hungary and in 2004 for four months in the EKWC (European Ceramic Work Centre, Oisterwijk). That is how ceramics became her medium.

Leda’s Game

She shows Leda’s Game, based on the story of Leda and the Swan. Leda was married to the Spartan king Tyndareos. To seduce Leda, the supreme god Zeus (who was in love with her) changed himself into a swan. Leda also slept with her husband that same night and then laid two eggs. We see Leda in a blue dress with her hands behind her back, if you look behind her back you see two eggs in her hands.

What is her key work?

“That is the work ‘I’, a shrunken version of my own head. It was created in 1994, by printing my own bust and shrinking it, underneath is the rest of the body in a blue woolen suit. The suit was created because I was going to make two rabbits for `Tros televisie`, so that Leonie Sazias could sing children’s songs with two rabbits on her lap. I often got the suits back because the inside had to be adjusted all the time. I mounted my shrunken self-portrait on one of those suits, that’s how ‘I’ came into being. He is sleeping and in his dream he ends up in POlymorph.”

What is her education?

We already saw that Netty attended the Art Academy in Den Bosch, but before that, from 1979 to 1983, she attended the Graphic Lyceum in Eindhoven. There she was taught ‘reproduction drawing’, advertising and nature drawing. “I had to unlearn that precise drawing from nature at the Art Academy in order to achieve more expression. That precise looking is still in my work. At the academy I chose the direction ‘Monumental’. That meant: drawing, painting and spatial. It was mainly about acquiring knowledge of materials and finding out a lot. Part of the education was a welding course and I also made a lot of sculptures and drawings. I really enjoyed my time at the academy! And… learned a lot, I absorbed it.”

Getting started

After the Academy (1983 – 1988) she started working as an artist. She was asked for a large group exhibition in `Fort Vuren`. There was no electricity in the fort yet, so everyone was given a flashlight to choose their own space. Suddenly she was alone in the fort and could not find the exit right away, a forgotten childhood fear surfaced. She eventually gave shape to this fear of the dark in an installation there by means of two skirts, made of clay with textile. “I thought that scared girl had long since disappeared, but she came up again from under a thick layer of maturity. The piece of textile are dresses that I wore with my sister as a child.”

The work is called ‘Uitzicht-Inzicht’ (View-Insight). There is light in the skirts, you approach the work from `view`. The small doll `I` keeps the viewer outside, whoever wants `insight` into the work has to do their best, that way you enter the parallel universe POlymorph.”

Exhibiting

She worked with Ron Mandos for eight years. After that she worked with various galleries that also showed her work at fairs in the Netherlands and abroad. In the Netherlands she was at Galerie Hüsstege (Den Bosch), at MPV gallery Oisterwijk, and currently at Van Loon Galleries in Vught. For an extensive CV, see www.nettyvanosch.nl

In 2012 major exhibitions were held at the Stedelijk Museum, Kampen NL and at the Forum für Zeitgenossische Keramik, Halle/Saale, Germany, where she had several rooms at her disposal.

She has taught extensively, including at the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam, the Sint Lucas Painting School in Boxtel, ceramics lessons at the ‘garenspinnerij’ in Gouda, etc.

“I have done everything to be able to continue working in my studio.”

Finally, what is her philosophy?

“I am working on a Universal Autobiography. It is a parallel universe, it is `the land of POlymorph`. PO and Kuna are the main characters, PO stands for cooperation, Kuna stands for autonomy, they try to work together, but it is often based on conflict and discord.

The installations are a visual game that is played in your head with interchangeable figures (pawns) on a game floor or in a garden. In this life you are either King or Pawn!”

Over time there have been small shifts. “I don’t know exactly where it will end up. It always keeps moving, if a pawn is sold, I exchange it for another, that’s how the picture and also the story of PO and Kuna in Polymorph changes.”

Images

1) a dislike (een Hekel, 2013, diameter 38 cm, ceramic, geode (mineral), hair, fur, Photography Rick Keus), 2) Wait & Waiting, 3) Kuna Centaur, 4) I, 5) Argument in Abundance (Ruzie in Overvloed), 6) detail Kuna, 7) Desert Days II (Woestijndagen II), 8) Trust, 9) Leda`s Game, 10) View (Uitzicht).

https://www.nettyvanosch.nl/
https://www.instagram.com/nettyvanosch/
https://www.mishmash.nl/en/fart-fine-art-pop-up-rotterdam/
https://www.dedoelen.nl/nl/agenda/22744/beeldende-reflecties-op-de-stad/schaduw-van-een-wolk
https://inzaken.eu/2025/03/19/een-universele-autobiografie-van-netty-van-osch/