me studio

in preparation for the exhibition ’50 years of the dutch national ballet’ at the dutch poster museum (late january till april), the national ballet have asked me to help curate and choose the selection of posters to be shown…

amongst the graphic designers who have at some point designed posters for them during that 50 year period (otto treumann, jurrian schroffer, dick elfers, gielijn escher) there was also a notable example by none other than ‘anton beeke’, the poster was very difficult to find and wasn’t even available in their own extensive archive, after calling a few reliable contacts i eventually managed to trace the original picture (shot by ‘boudewijn neuteboom’) shown above

fortunately last friday i finally found the original poster for ‘bacchanten’ (printed in black on brown parcel paper, with bronze silkscreen typography) from 1986, in the collection of the dutch theater institute ‘TIN’, both the poster and the actual performance were quite controversial at the time, although not one of my most favourite designs by ‘beeke’ it is very interesting for me as a ballet poster designer to see what preceded my own work…

a journalist told me that beeke had apparently once told him that one of the four models in the bacchanalian scene is photographer ‘rineke dijkstra’ who was, at the time, his assistant… we also managed to trace several other interesting archive pieces which will be shown when the exhibition opens later this month, more news soon…