Lily van der Stokker
°1954, 's-Hertogenbosch (NL) - lives and works in Amsterdam (NL)
Since the 1990s, Lily van der Stokker has been internationally known for her playful drawings and murals in bright colours. Van der Stokker’s cheerful drawings are made in bright or pastel colours. She often draws motifs such as flowers, curls and clouds. Van der Stokker combines these shapes with words or sentences that are very recognisable. Because of this combination of sweetly coloured shapes and short pieces of text, her works of art seem very easy and accessible. But that is only an illusion. In her own words, she makes ‘difficult art that looks easy’.
In terms of form, Van der Stokker, with her colourful flower and cloud decorations, is indebted to Pop Art. And through the use of text in her works, her practice is strongly rooted in the tradition of the conceptual art of the 1970s by, for example, Joseph Kosuth, or Lawrence Weiner. In a similar way, the text speaks directly to the viewer, but Van der Stokker asks very different questions than her (male) art historian predecessors.
Lily van der Stokker – Good old abstract art, 1992
Lily van der Stokker – Same painting, 2019
Lily van der Stokker – Flower Floor Painting, 2010
Lily van der Stokker – Miconalzolnitrate 2, 2019
Lily van der Stokker – Friendly Good at Stedelijk, Amsterdam in 2018
Lily van der Stokker – Yelling Women, 2014, exhibition view at Gallery Koenig & Clinton, New York
Lily van der Stokker – Nothing really, exhibition view at Aire de Paris
Lily van der Stokker – Call of the mall, 2013, permanetly installed in Utrecht
Lily van der Stokker ran a gallery in New York in the 1980s and broke through internationally in the 1990s with exhibitions in Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Villa Arson, Nice, among others. In recent years, she has had solo exhibitions at Tate St. Ives; New Museum, New York; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Migros Museum, Zurich; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Lily Van der Stokker is represented by the following galleries;
click through to discover more of her work:
Lily van der Stokker – The Tidy Kitchen, exhibition view at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2015 (Photo by Brian Forrest)
Lily van der Stokker – Het groen geruite huis (the green chequered house), at beaufort triennal, Oostende in 2015
Lily van der Stokker – Storage room, 2012
Lily van der Stokker – Exhibition view of Help help a little old lady here at Migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich in 2019
Lily van der Stokker – Exhibition view of Help help a little old lady here at Migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich in 2019
Lily van der Stokker – Exhibition view of Help help a little old lady here at Migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich in 2019
Lily van der Stokker – In the embellishment, at van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 2009
