Rijksakademie alumnus Arvo Leo (RA 17/18) will start his artist residency in ‘de Salmhuisjes’ in ARTIS in September.

The shared history of ARTIS and the Rijksakademie goes back a long way. Since the late nineteenth century, Rijksakademie artists visited the park to draw and ARTIS lent skeletons and live animals for drawing lessons. During the occupation years students even went into hiding in ARTIS. Our 150th anniversary is the perfect moment to tighten the bond and give this long and special relationship a new meaning. Canadian/New Zealand artist Arvo Leo kicks off in our renewed collaboration. For the past decade he has been examining the relationship between humans and other animals. In his new studio near the animals, plants and microbes he will work on various film and sculptural experiments.

"Once again, the Academy is grateful for the support of the Royal Zoological Society Natura Artis Magistra". For the purpose of teaching comparative dissections, the board of the Society was able to donate particularly good specimens from the Society's collection of skeletons, while those who had received the most fruitful education were allowed in the months of May - August to continue their studies by drawing living animals in the garden of Natura Artis Magistra".

The importance that ARTIS (in full: Natura Artis Magistra) has attached to art since its establishment is reflected in the name of the park: 'nature is the teacher of art'. It is not surprising that from the early days of the Rijksakademie artists were regularly found in ARTIS. Students of painter August Allebé – associated as a professor from 1870, as a director from 1890 – were even obliged to sketch in ARTIS. And ARTIS, in turn, sent animal skeletons to the Rijksakademie, or lent out living animals, which were then copied in the garden of the Rijksakademie. Many animal studies can therefore be found in the collection and archives of the Rijksakademie. The oldest, a lion and camel head by August Legras, date from 1879. The youngest sketch in the collection dates from 1970. The relationship between ARTIS and the Rijksakademie does not stop there. To this day, residents are shown around the ARTIS Library. And in 2017, during the Open Studios, residents Ana Maria Gómez López and Femke Herregraven brought a skeleton of a camel to the Rijksakademie in honour of their project 'Durational monochrome'. This was accompanied by a loan of a red and green variant of cyanobacteria via ARTIS-Micropia. Together with the skeleton, this formed a frame of reference for how life was represented a century ago and today. The sculpture of the camel in the garden of the Rijksakademie at the beginning of the 20th century had been their inspiration.

Some Rijksakademie artists have even become fully affiliated with ARTIS. Painter Marie Kelting, a pupil of August Allebé, worked for years from ARTIS on bird and animal images. She married reptile carer Piet Böhncke (who later became a sculptor). Sculptor Jaap Kaas, known as 'the sculptor of ARTIS', was constantly found in ARTIS since 1914. From 1927 to 1947 he was given a studio by the then ARTIS director Armand Sunier. Among His works include the lion (1938) and tiger (1939) that stand on the Plantage Middenlaan in front of the entrance of the Groote Museum. The commission came from the garden staff, who were allowed to submit a request for the installation of a work of art on the occasion of ARTIS’ centenary.

During the years of occupation some one hundred and fifty to three hundred people went into hiding in ARTIS, employees of the park fleeing the Arbeitseinsatz, resistance fighters and Jews, including Arie Teeuwisse, sculptor, illustrator and later cartoonist. He studied at the Rijksakademie with Jan Bronner in the early 1940s and was a good friend of Jaap Kaas. In 1943 the latter helped him go into hiding in ARTIS in order to stay out of the hands of the Nazis. Teeuwisse initially stayed in Kaas' studio, but because of the cold and the moist he eventually moved to the bear shelter, where he slept in the polar bear's night shelter, together with a number of zookeepers who had gone into hiding for the Arbeitseinsatz. After the war he continued his studies. There are several sculptures in ARTIS by his hand, including the statue of the aforementioned ARTIS director Sunier from 1987, as well as statues of the serval and the great-eared fox. Throughout his career, animals continued to predominate in his work.

From September 2020, Rijksakademie alumnus Arvo Leo (RA 2017/2018) will start his residency from the Salmhuisjes in ARTIS. It is at the same time the start of the renewed collaboration between the Rijksakademie and ARTIS. For the past decade the Canadian/New Zealand artist has been examining the relationship between humans and other animals which has led him to make works inspired by dung beetles, holy cows in India, a hunter-turned-artist from the Canadian Arctic, and the destruction of an ant colony in a forest fire in Canada. More recently, he has moved his research further towards botany, ecology, and ethnobotany, studying the relationship between humans and various plant species, particularly angiosperms (flowering plants). Arvo Leo is currently preparing for his residence with further research into plants, bacteria, excrement, and fertilisers. He will soon be taking his knowledge to ARTIS, where he will begin various film and sculptural experiments in his new studio nearby the animals. This will result in a project yet to be realised for the ARTIS and Rijksakademie public. We will keep you informed!

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