“Amsterdam is a place very dear to us, as it is the first city we traveled to at the very beginning of our career. Traveling to Amsterdam now, in order to find inspiration, felt like a completely new experience to us. It was exiting to approach Amsterdam from a new perspective and have the opportunity to take inspiration from such a fascinating city. This time we finally had the opportunity to visit the Vincent van Gogh Museum as well as the incredible Stedelijk Museum. We were also lucky enough to visit Amsterdam when the Artzuid Amsterdam sculpture biennale was taking place, with public sculptures from so many different artists on display.

Coming from Belgrade, we are surrounded by massive concrete structures and buildings from the Yugoslavia era. It is also a city where culture and art are not nurtured in the same way as in Amsterdam. It felt special to experience a city where you can visit museums where you can immerse yourself in the history and the art of a country and the city. Walking around the old parts of Amsterdam surrounded by what looks like fairytale like buildings to us was such a calm and welcoming escape of the hustle and bustle of a city like Belgrade.

Inspired by the many interesting outdoor sculptures we came across, we chose to go in the direction of a monumental and sculptural composition in our artwork, mixed in with an aggressive aesthetic. Two of the sculptures we saw were of specific inspiration to us. The first one is Thomas Puckey’s sculpture ‘The Lens Trees’ with its sharp pointed forms, inspiring us to use sharp and bending gestures. Secondly is the sculpture ’45 Degrees Artificial Rock’ by Zhan Wang. The textures from this sculpture inspired us to intertwine the textures with our bold black gestures. For the color palette, we chose an intense orange color to contrast against the light purple. Finally the halftone in the purple color was our way to reference to the lake in the Flevopark, a point of calmness during our trip.”

Travel diary…

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

This morning in Belgrade felt like we were already in the Netherlands as we woke up to grey sky’s  and some rain. We packed yesterday, and after gathering our things this morning the stress of ‘will everything go smooth with the trip and and won’t we be denied entrance in tho the Netherlands because of daily shifting covid 19 restrictions’, we had a quick breakfast and we were of to Nikola Tesla Airport.

One quick flight and mini muffin later, we had arrived to Schiphol Airport, reached the passport control and we were finally able to put our stress to rest as we passed through. A quick train ride later, we arrived directly at the Central Station and were welcomed to the wonderland that is Amsterdam.

As soon as you enter the city you are taken in to the whirlwind of people, we managed to weave trough the masses and get to our tram witch took us to our hotel. Immediately after entering our room we repacked and got ready to go outside and make the best out of the reaming daylight.

Euphoria stricken we ran outside and even after just ten minutes of walking, we were surprised how the city somehow has a totally different vibe every time you visit, even if a corner is familiar it seems as you are seeing it for the first time. We were instantaneously pulled in to the labyrinth of the narrow winding roads leading to perfectly crooked old buildings, in every color imaginable, with detail upon detail after each corner. We admired the differences in the architecture, the people and the all-over energy of the city compared to our home town Belgrade.

After a quick stop to tho the grocery store to grab something to eat we found a nice spot next to the canals to enjoy the last rays of sunlight, as the sun disappeared behind the pointy roofs of Amsterdam. Even though Amsterdam is a city know for its many different attractions and draws a large  amount of people to it, there are always small pockets of the city where it fells like no one is around.

After nightfall we walked around a bit more enjoying the instant change in surrounding as soon as all the details disappeared into the pitch-black and the many different lights emerged from the darkness of the streets of Amsterdam.

A quick stroll around the museum quarter near our hotel and we were back at home, ready to rest for tomorrow. All in all we had a nice start to our trip and enjoyed our first evening quiet a lot, and we are exited for the upcoming days.

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

This morning we woke up at 7:30. At first glance it seemed that it was still night time, and after chilling in the room for an hour and waiting for the daylight to arrive, we stepped out of the hotel and went directly to the Vondel Park for a morning stroll.

Even in the park at early hours in the morning there was so many bikes and people jogging and doing morning activities. Dodging bikes left and right we started exploring the park, after walking a few minutes we ran in to the amazing Picasso sculpture witch was quite impressive to see up close.

After walking around a bit more and exploring the park and its many sculptures and installations it started raining in typical Dutch fashion, so we chose to cut our walk short and revisit the park another day.

We changed our plan and started heading to the Museum Quarter to visit the Stedelijk Museum of modern art. Inside we admired works from familiar artist as Karel Appel, Pablo Picasso, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Yves Klein, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Petter Saul, Barbara Kruger and many more. There was also a Bruice Newman exhibition currently on show which was quite interesting.

After finishing with the Stedelijk Museum we walked around the RijksMuseum where we found the famous KAWS sculpture, and an amazing Selection of Ellsworth Kelly Sculptures positions in the beautiful garden going around the RijksMuseum. After finishing with museums for today, we started heading back to the city center to explore a bit and capture some interesting details and colors as inspiration for our upcoming print.

A few more hours in the on-and-off-again rain, while walking around the Jordaan district and the neighborhoods surrounding it, we found a nice Mandarin restaurant to have dinner, after dinner we realized that our legs can’t take us any further so we chose to call it a day and go back to our room to rest up for tomorrow.

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Today we started on a different note, waking up to sunny sky’s we hopped out of bed and went outside to enjoy the morning and its nice weather. We had some time to kill before our scheduled time to visit the Van Gogh Museum so we walked around the city center and grabbed some food from the store. After some surprisingly good supermarket sushi we started heading back the the museum district and the entrance of Van Gogh museum.

We have wanted to visit the Van Gogh museum for a while now but somehow we never got around to it. This trip was the perfect moment to finally cross it off our list. It was a great experience from the entrance to the complete design of the museum itself, and of course to finally seeing the well known works in person and also other paintings we hadn’t even seen in books.

Van Gogh is really a painter you have to see in person, only then you can really see every detail clearly and enjoy his heavy brush strokes to the fullest extent. The surface of the paintings looking more sculpted than painted, his work is so precise but at the same time so free balanced with perfect light and color giving the paintings so much life. It was really something special to see, and to us there is no question as to why he is considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time.

After the museum we started heading to Amsterdam Zuid district to check out the Artzuid Sculpture Biennale. There we found many different and interesting sculptures, some of our favorites were the blue Polyester sculpture by artist duo Adelheid & Huub Kortekaas, the yellow polyester, polyurethane, metal sculpture by Nick Ervinck and the metal 45 degrees Artificial Rock by Zhan Wang.

It was quite nice to walk around this whole district. After we had watched some bizarre claw-shaped machine demolish a building one bite at a time, we headed back to our room because after walking non stop for 12 hours a day, two days in a row, we are starting to feel it.

Friday, October 1, 2021

We woke up this morning around 09.00 and started to get ready to make our way to the waterfront behind the main station, to catch the ferry here. The weather was already showing signs of rain so we hurried down the streets of the city centre, passing by some storks casually hanging out in the streets waiting to grab some food.

After a few more minutes walking we had arrived at the pier, ready to catch a ferry to NDSM. The NDSM Wharf is a former shipyard located on the banks of the River IJ in Amsterdam Noord, and has changed into a cultural hotspot in recent years with a vibrant artist community and expanding variety of bars and restaurants.

Here we visited The Jaunt exhibition located in the gallery space inside Straat Museum and had a nice chat with Jeroen Smeets, the Jaunt curator, and the Italian artist Tellas who was  finishing his artwork for the Straat museum.

After this we caught the ferry back to the main station and started heading in to the direction of Oesterpark. We walked around the Oosterpark for a while but round18:00 the constant rain showers got the best of us so we decided to go back to the room and dry off a bit. In the evening we went to have some nice ramen to warm up after so much time in wind and rain.

Today was a bit of a battle with the elements but we were able to see some more parts of Amsterdam witch we didn’t visit these days, so that was a nice treat.

Saturday, October 2, 2021

When we woke up this morning and looked out the window it seemed quite cloudy and foggy we chose to stay in the room and have our typical window side breakfast and wait for the weather to clear up a bit.

After a quick bite we sat down to take a look at some scans of some textures and gestures we had prepared in Belgrade before our trip, and speak a bit about in which way we would want to integrate them in to the composition for the print design, after bouncing some ideas back and forth we remembered that we wanted to visit an art store close to the hotel.

We organized our room and packed up our things one last look at the Scott Albrecht print hanging in our room and started heading out. it didn’t take us long to get to the art store where we found some new color tones of Lino print colors we have not been able to find back home so we were quite happy about this.

Considering this was our last day we chose to take it easy and go over to Flevopark to relax a bit from the city. Flevopark was a great experience, and a very nice place to walk and explore, we ran in to the amazing Anxiety Rabbit sculpture by Parra which was a nice surprise.

After walking around the park we started heading to the tram station at Flevopark where we past the hall of fame walls painted with graffiti underneath the bridge which brought back some nostalgic memories of Amsterdam back in 2010, one of our first trips when we were just at the start of our artistic careers.

On the way back during multiple breaks, to rest our aching legs and feet after walking for 12 hours each day, we talked about color schemes and in which direction to take the colour pallete for our print. After some time we ran in to the ‘Degooyer’ windmill, and wemade a small tour to the Nemo science museum to climb up on to its roof and take a better look of Amsterdam.

On our way back to the hotel it started to rain, we were happy that today the good wether held up till the last moment. This trip  was an amazing experience to have time to explore each end of Amsterdam taking in its museums, art and sculptures exploring the channels winding around its amazing historic and modern architecture and walking around and relaxing in one of its great parks.

We are both happy to have had such a fulfilling trip here in Amsterdam and we are ready to take this energy and work on creating an interesting design for the upcoming print with the Jaunt.