The Dutch designer Gijs Bakker gained fame as cofounder of Droog Design. For some time now, though, he has been better known in international art circles as a pioneer in the field of jewelry design.

‘I Don’t Wear Jewels, I Drive Them’ - is what Bakker called one of his series of brooches, an ironic comment on the passion many men feel towards their cars. In his ‘Holy Sport’ brooches he takes up the theme - with no less playful irony - of the ‘religious’ character of football and other kinds of popular sports. Just as with most of his jewelry since the 1960s, these later works confirm Gijs Bakker’s status as one of the leading avantgardists of author’s jewelry.

From 1958 to 1962, he trained as a gold- and silversmith at the Amsterdam Instituut voor Kunstnijverheid (now called the Rietveld Akademie). Then, from the mid-1960s onwards, he and his wife Emmy van Leersum (1930-1984) began to explore new ways in jewelry design.

His breakthrough came with the Swinging Sixties, when Bakker’s geometrically abstract jewelry became an absolute fashion ‘must’. In the 1970s and 1980s Bakker’s designs took on a completely new quality: The so called ‘profile jewelry’ for Fritz Maierhofer or Emmy van Leersum, his late wife who died in 1984, are inseparably linked to the wearers and emphasise their unique nature in the way they adapt precisely to persons wearing them. His later works are often a critical, yet playful comment on the world and people around him.

Bakker is equally innovative in his choice of unusual materials and techniques, using aluminium, plastic, wood, flowers, gold leaf and combining, for instance, PVC-laminated photographs with precious stones and metals.

Gijs Bakker seldom designs a single piece of jewelry but virtually always produces a series in which one idea is developed in different ways. This is sometimes a formal starting point, as in the series of aluminium jewelry (1967-1971). Most of his work, however, is based on a theme, such as the enormous neck jewelry comprising laminated photographs of regally worn necklaces (1977), the series of brooches combining photos of sports celebrities with precious stones (’Sportfiguren’ 1985-1989), or the ‘Holy Sport’ (1998) and ‘Car Crash’ (2001) series. In this connection, Bakker’s statement, ‘I don’t wear jewels, I drive them’, is indicative of his engagement with jewelry.
His constant drive to revitalize his work does not just have a passive, uncontrollable influence on the professional field of jewelry. Gijs Bakker is too strong-willed to leave innovation to chance. In co-founding the Chi Ha Paura…? Foundation, he deliberately created a framework in which he challenges other designers and artists to produce new ideas, materials and techniques. What Droog Design (which Bakker also co-founded) is to product designers, Chi Ha Paura…? is to jewelry designers.

In addition to his unique pieces of jewelry, Bakker repeatedly feels the urge to make mass-produced, well-designed jewelry. Whether he is embracing the ideals of the modernists in this need or whether it is inspired by the idea of democratization that his generation strived for, Gijs Bakker has never limited his activities to his own studio and likewise never extolled fine handwork. With his collaborative projects and urge for renewal, he has always been a cultural entrepreneur to the core.

Die Neue Sammlung - the State Museum of Applied Arts and Design in Munich - has for some time now devoted itself intensively to the subject of author’s jewelry and dedicated a large, permanent display area to this very theme: the ‘Danner Rotunda’ in the Pinakothek der Moderne. It is against this background that this retrospective is focusing on one of the revolutionaries of the Sixties. The exhibition provides multi-facetted insights into the oeuvre of Gijs Bakker. It is one that negates the traditional boundaries of the free and applied arts.

Location:
Pinakothek der Moderne, Barer Strasse 40, D-80333 Munich

Info:
Tel. +49 (0)89-23.805-260, +49 (0)89-27.27.25-0
info@die-neue-sammlung.de