Marte Roling covers the sixties jazz avantgarde
I must admit that in the sixties I didn’t know much about Marte Röling (born in Amsterdam in 1939, two years younger than your record collector, and a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion since January 2010). I had had drawing lessons from the nice father of conferencier Paul van Vliet at the lyceum Zandvliet in The Hague, but his strong efforts were completely wasted on me and did not encourage my interest in art.
Luckily my work brought me in narrow contact with the world of graphics and I realized that art is an indispensable part of human existence. Today some 80,000 covers in my record collection are proof of a graphical wonder world I cannot appreciate high enough. They are applicable art in optima forma. The Picasso-styled covers by Marte Röling are a striking example of that cover art.
Marte Röling does not make you worry about things like usefulness or application. She made silkscreen prints of Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus -or recent in fifty five fold paintings of her late husband Henk Jurriaans-, all straight and recognizable. Maybe that made her a good designer of record covers. Covers have the advantage they date and interpret or catalogue themselves through the music as a product of its time. Covers are frozen music. The covers that Marte Röling made for the Fontana label half way the sixties immediately catch your eye when you see them. Marte Röling, then aged 25 and just after an exhibition at the Paris Biennale, sketches the free jazz of the sixties by filling up the artist’s brains with their ‘free spirits’. She makes visible what the musicians feel and hear in their music with powerful Picasso-like lines.
Marte silkscreen printed around 12 or 14 of these covers. We would wish she made more of these strong contributes to the world of music and art.
I am happy with the opportunity to show the eight covers I collected through the years at the exposition ‘100 years of Dutch Graphic Design’. From October 25th 2010 till April 25th 2011.
Marius Quist, record collector.
maquist@kpnmail.nl
Posted by Amanda
Cornelius van Velsen was not less famous for his posters. Catchy posters, immediately recognizable when hanging in the streets, one word should be enough, he made 170 of them. His style can be compared with the work of Abram Games in the UK. 
