DATE: 1982

DIMENSIONS: 13-1/4"h

MEDIUM/MATERIALS: Painted wood

PROVENANCE: The artist's wife

CONDITION: Vintage mint

BIO COURTESY OF ARTLAND: Govert Heikoop was born in 1951 and was predominantly influenced creatively by the 1970s. The art sphere of the 1970s was characterized by a desire to evolve and reinforce itself, as a response to the many tensions of the previous decade. One of the most central movement of the 1970s was Conceptualism, which emerged as an offshoot of Minimalism, while the experimental, creative journey of Process art materialized by combining essential elements of Conceptualism with further reflections on art itself. The initial ideas of environmentalism sprung from Land Art, which took art into earth itself, sculpting the land and bringing art to the outdoors. For the first time since the regression of Abstract Expressionism, Expressive figure painting slowly resurfaced and regained its prominence, especially in Germany through the works of critically acclaimed figures Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. The city of New York remained as the most prominent artistic hub of the decade, with global artists drifting through the downtown scene, frequenting bars and art galleries, strengthening the idea of New York City as a cosmopolitan and sophisticated cultural capital. Reaching the end of the 1970s, street art, evolving from graffiti, was starting to truly mesmerize the fine art community. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat helped legitimize spray painting and tagging, demonstrating that their artworks could subsist at the same time in art galleries and in urban settings. Following, the international extent of street art would become extremely significant, representing an extraordinary form of artistic expression.