About Faculteit 7

A painting by Joan de Bot.

Is it an exciting cityscape, a stark but bustling metropolis at night? Summer in the City? The colours and shapes of a quirky jazz improvisation, totally free yet based on agreements and rules? Or a raging sea made calm with stylised serenity? Just a beautiful thing with preferably no explanation?
The viewer may decide.

In any case, the not-so-everyday magnum opus of Faculteit 7 by Joan de Bot arose on a whim.

A sudden brain wave, followed by a month of nonstop hard work, very precise but also uninhibited and delightfully liquid. That does fit with ‘improvisation’, even though it is not jazz but acrylic paint.

Result – Joan already knew after that first impulse that it would be like this, but was still surprised – 81 stripes set down 113 times on raw linen. Again such a beautiful contradiction: a meticulous ordering of 9000 detailed, not quite finished, almost messy, tiny paintings within a larger painting. Less than 4 cm in size, all different, all restless and yet still hand drawn. Infinitely taut and infinitely playful and varied. That is for sure.

Faculteit 7, the facts and figures

The canvas is 130 cm high and 260 cm long. Acrylic paint. At first glance, neat squares like bathroom mosaic tiles on raw linen, yet another contradiction.

The ‘mother painting’ from 1978 is coloured white, light yellow, dark yellow, orange, red, purple and blue. Starting at the top and going down, the painting becomes blue at exactly halfway. Even Joan herself does not know exactly why.
Suddenly something happens to the structure in the ‘blue half’: it gradually goes from tidy columns to flowing ones, flowing downwards.

Life before and after Fac7

The serene yet lively theme of the Fac7 painting inspired Joan de Bot to a whole group of tasteful spin-offs: fashion prints, fashion designs, textiles – from silk scarves to bold tapestries – and pottery, all emphatically bearing the original Fac7 motif. There are prototypes that cannot wait to be put into production and sometimes they have already materialised and are for sale in her studio. You can also simply inquire or order by contacting her online should she be travelling again.

Joan lives in Amsterdam, but is happy to loiter as an ‘Artist in Residence’ in inspiring places such as New York or the Spanish Callosa on the Costa Blanca.

Would that be why Faculteit 7 has become such an international painting?