Signed in felt tip pen on a label on the reverse; titled and dated 2005 II/ IV on a separate label affixed to the stretcher. Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner Exhibited: Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Daan van Golden - Golden Years, 26 August 2006 - 5 November 2006 Den Haag, GEM, Daan van Golden - Reflecties, 1 February 2014 - 4 May 2014 (R) Daan van Golden lives and works in the Netherlands. His work has influences deriving from Pop art, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, and integrates themes relevant to our daily lives. He won the prestigious Foundation for Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Art, Design and Architecture (BKBV) in 2011 for his artistic contribution and his work can be found in major important private collections. Daan van Golden has always worked slowly, having even stopped working for almost a decade in the late sixties. His work is considered to be rare and for the most part it resides in the collection of Dutch museums. The present lot: Study A.G. by Daan van Golden is a reflection of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). The three dimensional sculpture was recreated by van Golden to a contour of Giacometti’s art, and is undeniably reflective of the sculpture Woman Standing (Leoni), 1947 (Guggenheim, New York). Executed in 2000, Study A.G. exemplifies Daan van Golden’s redefinition of form through appropriation. A constant factor in this capricious oeuvre is his use of existing images. He is fascinated by the changes and distortions displayed by an image when it is executed in another medium. Daan van Golden shows that the unique beauty and identity of an object can be shown through in-depth study. For his first silhouette painting (Study H.M.) Van Golden choose a detail from a famous Henri Matisse painting: The Parakeet and the Mermaid, 1952 (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). It is no coincidence that Van Golden’s first silhouette work is inspired by Matisse; the celebrated French painter is the inventor of the gouache cut-out in pure colors. More than an act of homage, Van Golden draws the distinction between perception and apperception. Van Golden’s work, as shown in the present lot, shows extreme tension between the pattern and the background, and through its exploration he underlines the importance of emptiness to the definition of forms and calls into question the visual certainties of the spectator. Meticulously painted against a flat monochrome background the motif is reproduced accurately, the formal and and laborious technique reframes the original object, imbuing it with new meaning. Since the 1960s, he has been the subject of numerous solo shows at institutions including The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam, The Netherlands; Le Consortium, Dijon; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Gemeente Museum, The Hague, the Netherlands; Musee d’art modern et contemporain, Geneva; Musée des Arts Contemporains de la Communauté Française de Belgique, Grand Hornu; and Wiels, Brussels.