BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors
esc
Pieter and Carla Schulting
The Schulting Art Collection
Pieter and Carla Schulting started collecting art in the 90s. Their initial focus was on Dutch Romantic Art (e.g. A. Schelfhout) and The Hague School of Art (e.g. H.W. Mesdag) from the 19th century, followed by French (e.g. A. Marquet) and Belgian (post-) Impressionists (e.g. Th. van Rysselberghe), Pop Art (e.g. Warhol), Street Art (e.g. Banksy), Minimal art from the 60s (e.g. Fontana) and contemporary art in general (B. Riley, P. Halley, Y. Kusama).
In 2018, they were very much attracted by the novelty and freshness of Contemporary African Art. They discovered many artworks of high quality and were surprised that this was as yet unknown in the art world. Until then, they had heard of a few big names from the African continent, such as W. Kentridge and El Anatsui, but now they discovered a huge array of new young talents (e.g. S. Mlengeya, K. Nyamai, L. Ky, and K. Botchway).
The couple initially collected mainly portraiture and figurative imagery, but after a while, they also started to collect abstract works, sculptures, photographs, and works made of textiles or waste materials.
Eventually, this resulted in a museum exhibition in Kunsthal KAdE in the Netherlands in 2023, which presented a large cross-section of the collection, showing how diverse, complex, and promising the artistic development of contemporary African art was.
With a focus on young artists - most are in their thirties, a few in their early twenties - the exhibition was not a comprehensive overview of African art, but an anthology from an emerging art scene that had gained an increasingly prominent place in the international art firmament.
Carla and Pieter Schulting were eyewitnesses to the blossoming of a group of young artists who were taking the art world by storm in the wake of a number of - now - big names. Looking at the rich visual vocabulary of the African artists in the Schulting collection, one senses long histories, many experiences - including traumatic ones - and great stories ready to be told. A history of many histories, portrayed from specific points of view and individual cultural experiences, presenting Africa from within, with great self-awareness and a sense of how the black body had been treated for centuries.
Their ultimate goal is to have representation of all of the countries of the African continent in their collection and they hope that the collection will travel to a museum in another country. In this way, they hope to support the artists concerned and African art in general.
