Naked roots

Together with Lucio Fontana and Thomas Schütte, Johan Creten is considered one of the pioneers of the revival of ceramics in contemporary art. He has been using clay in a highly innovative and personal manner since as far back as the 1980s. His beautifully coloured sculptures contain numerous (ambiguous) references. Influenced by man and nature, classical antiquity, art history, opera, literature, and poetry, complemented with more current, socially charged subjects such as politics, racism, power relations, and sexuality, Johan Creten moulds all these impressions into a wonderful world filled with fantastic animals, flowers, and human figures. His work is stunningly beautiful and, at times, very controversial. This book contains nine exceptional historical objects from Creten's collection that relate to his groundbreaking oeuvre.This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Naked Roots/Naakte Wortels in museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague. Explanatory text by Joost Bergman, art historian, art advisor, and lecturer in art history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.