Auke de Vries: Models and Drawings Towards a Recent Sculpture for a Public Space

Models and sketches show the material process involved in the development of a recent sculpture commission by Auke de Vries, one of the Netherlands’ leading sculptors.

Auke de Vries is regarded as one of the Netherlands’ leading sculptors. He began as a painter and made his first sculpture in 1968. He has been professor of Graphic Art at the Royal Academy of Art, Den Haag, followed by professor of Sculpture at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.

Exhibiting regularly and widely throughout Europe since the late 1950s, a major retrospective of his work was held at the Museum Wiesbaden in 1990. Titled Skulpturen, the exhibition described Auke de Vries’s approach to making public art works:

“He does not approach them as an artist only, but takes on two or more parts. The part of the citizen whose imaginary wishes, dreams and feeling he explores at the beginning of each project. And also the part of the patron whose orders he usually reformulates in reply to the expectations of the public.

“Only then does Auke de Vries set to work with his creative power and sensitivity, his vivacity, and sometimes his light irony. An artist’s position which, in a world of vanities and grand gestures, seems exceptionally modest. But which gets possible on the basis of an – in the best sense of the word – elite self-commitment to highest quality.”

Catalogue accompanying Skulpturen, 1990

This exhibition concentrates on de Vries’ mental process in developing a commissioned sculpture for the National Architecture Institute (NAI) in Rotterdam, which was completed in early Summer 1994. Through the sketches and models shown here it is possible to follow the evolution of the sculpture, from concept to physical fact.