Remnants from a cellar

In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the art trade in Amsterdam was highly active. At the same time, many newspaper editorial offices were still based in the capital, and art critics made every effort to follow exhibitions as closely as possible and publish reviews in their papers. This was also the case in other cities in the Netherlands. In The Hague, for example, the prominent newspaper Het Vaderland was based there, and it even had a dedicated editor for each branch of the arts (theatre, ballet, visual arts, and literature).

Alongside Magdalena Sothmann, Galerie Espace, M.L. de Boer, Ina Broerse, Galerie Krikhaar, and many others, Galerie d’Eendt, run by Will Hoogstraate, was located on the Spuistraat from 1960 to 1987. He had started out as a collector and later developed into an art dealer. The gallery hosted numerous exhibitions of international calibre, featuring artists such as Horst Antes, Karel Appel, Bernard Buffet, Fernando Botero (and his wife Sophia Vari), Constant, David Hockney, Marino Marini, Picasso, Poliakoff, Zadkine, and many more.

In addition, Galerie d’Eendt also exhibited, for many years, lesser-known artists from the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Italy, Poland, and Germany—artists who were eager to present their work to the world. One of these artists, Lorenzo Alessandri, for example, now has a museum dedicated to his own works in Turin, Italy.