History of Galerie d’Eendt
The precessor: gallery Le Canard
In 1941 Hans Rooduin starts the antiquarian bookshop d’Eendt in Utrecht, when he had to stop his theology studies because he did not want to sign the Aryan declaration. D’Eendt stands for ‘acting like a duck’, according to Aristotle: ‘The animal that goes into hiding and does not get wet’. Hans Rooduin joined the resistance and was not caught. So he wrote on the window of his shop: d’Eendt
In 1945 the antiquarian bookshop moves to Amsterdam. In a nearby building on the Spuistraat Hans Rooduin starts also a gallery “Le Canard” in 1950, where he brought the experimentalists known as Cobra, and new movements such as Zero. In 1960 H. Rooduin becomes aphasic due to an accident. Mr. Will Hoogstraate takes over the antiquarian bookshop from him and starts “Galerie d’Eendt” there.
Galerie d’Eendt
Amsterdamse Moderne-kunsthandel D’Eendt N.V. was founded in 1960 by Will Hoogstraate. In that year, d’Eendt also opened a branch in Finsterwolde in collaboration with Mr. Waalkens and the artist Siep van den Berg.
Hoogstraate emphatically profiled himself as an art dealer. He organised exhibitions of internationally renowned artists from almost all movements of the 20th century. For example, in 1966 there was a winter exhibition with work by Appel, Chirico, Chagall, Dali, Dubuffet, Van Doesburg, I. Israëls, Klee, Kokoschka, Miro, Picasso and Van Velde.
In 1964, Galerie d’Eendt was at the first Salon Internationale des Galeries Pilotes in Lausanne. Here, Mr. Hoogstraate showed works by the artists Eugene Brands and Constant. He was one of the initiators of several art fairs in the Netherlands. In 1969 Hoogstraate was one of the founders of the Art Fair in Basel and he was a member of the selection committee until 1987.
Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten – d’Eendt
In 1987 Will Hoogstraate stopped and handed over the gallery to Ferdinand van Dieten.
With his background as an art collector and philosopher, Ferdinand van Dieten gave the gallery a new direction. “The policy of gallery Ferdinand van Dieten is focused on the work of art that testifies to the independence and meaning of visual thinking, as this is shown in art with a reflexive approach to image, action and attitude”.
In the late 1980s Van Dieten mainly brought young artists into figurative painting, a new development for the Netherlands at the time. But the policy has always remained broad in the sense that it does not opt for movements or media, but for strong positions in art. The gallery now represented both renowned and young Dutch artists and about half of the gallery’s artists are foreign, including several artists who have achieved great fame very quickly, such as Thoma Demand, Jewyo Rhii, Mounir Fatmi or Yoshitomo Nara,
In 1991, Galerie d’Eendt was the first gallery outside Japan to represent Yoshitomo Nara. It made a whole series of exhibitions with him in the period 1991 – 1998 and I sold quite a lot of his works. For a part these have been on the secondary market already by myself directly or by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. There are still some works at my original clients, that have never been on the secondary market. From time to time I can offer on behave of my clients such works.
All Nara works I offer are sold by my gallery, directly from the artist during the exhibitions of Nara between 1991 and 1997. They come from the first buyers. I’m in contact with Nara’s studio directly and all these works are registered at Nara Studio (Tokyo).