Page 51 - The 70s - ABC of the material

pigment and a tassel with which she worked on a piece of the surface under the critical eye of Christina
Berndes and the curator of restorations. This demonstration was successful and fully satisfied we parted from
the work and from each other.
In March 2013 until 2016 I started a correspondence exchange via email with Maria van Elk in response to our
donation of the work Enlargement ↔ Reduction (1976) to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. In this work of
art Maria works explicitly with material, form and line. At our first meeting with her work in 1977 in the stable
gallery of farmer Waalkens in Finsterwolde we bought immediately this monumental work (1,5 x 7,5m) of a white
continuous line across five large with oil pastel blackened canvases. It was subsequently exhibited in 1981 in
the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and in 1983 at the Kunstamt Kreuzberg in Berlin and subsequently got a
permanent location in my nuclear physics laboratory of the RUG in Groningen.

This was for us, after Ad Dekkers and Jan Schoonhoven a fantastic continuation of the quest
for and the research of the essence of matter, form, colour and the ultimate of the line. She is
interested in concrete and clear images that speak totally for themselves.
After this introduction in her for us fascinating work we continued to follow her. Especially at her
home in Amsterdam we found in her collection many inspiring works that we wanted around us.
This way we could acquire a number of interesting works and a few that she donated to us that
connected to our pursuit as humans to come to essentials.

All this left traces in a part of my inaugural speech as professor in the nuclear physics techniques at
the TU Eindhoven, 1989, as follows:
“A thorough investigation to the essence of the line, especially in the act of drawing, is carried out
by the artist Maria van Elk. She mirrors a line with a thread that is fixed at one point. The symmetry
is determined by the proportionality of dimension and position. Line and thread each are made of
uninterrupted matter, causing them to be topologically equivalent. Because gravity works differently
on thread and line the topological symmetry is broken and an extra tension appears. She also
presents solutions, a.o.t. with white oil pastel on black canvas in which it appears possible that
of Two straight lines one is always crooked.”

left
Transport of Enlargement ↔ Reduction to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2012)
Left Sieb Bohlken and Martien de Voigt
On the right Maria van Elk
above
Receipt of the Van Abbemuseum for transport of work of art (September 12th, 2012)

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