While we were in The Netherlands last June we took the chance to go to Amsterdam as it was somewhere we’d never visited. It involved quite a long train journey, first on a swish kind of Inter-City double-decker train from Heerenveen to Zwolle, then a slower type of train called a Sprinter, which seemingly stopped everywhere between Zwolle and Amsterdam, including six stations in Almere alone!

The sprinter had decorations in the style of the artist Mondrian.

Glass partition:-

The walls of the toilet were also styled like Mondrian – see where corridor doglegs :-

We got off at Amsterdam Centraal Station. Central facade:-

Stitch of frontage:-

Canal scenes:-

Amsterdam City Hall:-

Clock building in Muntplein:-

Earlier this month we took in the Barbara Hepworth Exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern Two, Edinburgh.

The Exhibition is entitled Barbara Hepworth, Art and Life and is open till 2/10/2022.

As well as sculpture, for which Hepworth is most famous, there are some of her paintings on display. In the first room this one reminded me of Mondrian:-

Photograph of Contrapuntal Forms, a Hepworth sculpture displayed at the Festival of Britain’s South Bank site in London. Part of the Skylon can be seen in the background:-

Room 2 had more early paintings. Apologies for the picture quality. I didn’t use flash as I assumed it wouldn’t be allowed:-

These watercolours are very good:-

Also in room 2, some typical Hepworth sculptures:-

The leftmost one above, Dyad, caught the good lady’s eye:-

During World War 2 Hepworth’s access to sculptural materials was limited. This is one of the sketches she made as preparation for a sculpture:-

She even designed textiles:-

An ovoid sculpture with her characteristic smooth curves and voids:-

A more traditional sculpture but still with her distinctive curves:-

Orpheus. An example of her use of strings. (See also background of Dyad, above):-

Thsi one seems to be very similar to one I photographed outside the Pier Art Centre, Stromness, a few weeks before:-

In Stromness:-

Photograph of Winged Figure, John Lewis, London:-

Photograph of Hepworth beside one of her sculptures:-

I posted photos of some of the buildings in Drachten, Friesland, The Netherlands, in November 2016.

Last year we visited the town again and it seemd to be on a Mondrian kick.

Several commercial premises were done out in his signature style.

Garage:-

Shoe shop:-

Shoe shop’s other window:-

Stack of cubes in a café:-

Suspended cubes in the same café:-

We asked in the café what the reason for the Mondrian decorations was and they seemed not to know but thought it might have been a celebration of De Stijl (the Style.) 2017 was its 100^th anniversary.

I have posted about Surhuisterveen before, here and here.

This May we were there again and I saw some deco style buildings I’d missed in 2104.

Detailing on roof corner:-

This former bank is a modern building but with decoish aspects:-

Aspect round the corner:-

Deco style stained glass window. Mondrian-like:-

We had arrived just in time for Dutch Remembrance Day (May 5^th I think.) I prefer their wreaths to the British poppy-heavy ones:-