SUMMER 2024
22 June – 22 September 2024
In the summer of 2024 the Dutch sculptor Herbert Nouwens (1954) will show nine monumental sculptures in the Museum park of Museum Belvédère, under the name of Belvédère Suite, in analogy with the musical term. Six sculptures were selected from different periods of Nouwens’ sizeable oeuvre and three were made especially for this exhibition. In addition the west wing of the museum shows a chamber presentation with smaller work he made.
Themes like ‘movement and tranquility, ‘mortality’ and ‘life and death’ are central in Nouwens’ oeuvre. The constructive and destructive forces in our world inspired him to make his new sculptures for Belvédère Suite.
The title of the exhibition refers to the multi-part dance compositions of the Baroque, in which different dances were ordered to contrast with each other. Because the different parts of a suite are in the same key they still form a unity.
In the selection and arrangement of the nine sculpures in the Museum park the artist aims at a similar interplay between the sculptures themselves, and with the rigid symmetrical design of the park landscape.
Nouwens is known for his often large and capricious structures of used materials – mainly steel – that show traces of an earlier life.
His preference for steel has to do wih the wide plastic and constructive possibilities of the material. This results in sculptures with extreme contrasts, seeming weightlessness, or large volumes that can be very transparent.
Steel also fits in with his associative way of working. Nouwens translates his impressions and vision of the world in forms that grow through his cutting, distorting, forging and assembling steel.
In this translation Nouwens follows the tradition of post-war sculpturing, developing a completely personal form language.
His works of art can be found in numerous places in the Netherlands, such as Fuga at the entry of IJmuiden, a seventeen metres high open construction, or The Gate of Bergen, two eight metres high closed towers, at the entry to the artists’ village in Noord-Holland. In Amsterdam twenty sculptures, named Brettensuite, are permanently placed alongside a walking and cycling track in the Westerpark and the adjoining nature area de Bretten.
Nouwens was educated at the Stadsacademie in Maastricht, concluding it in 1977 by winning the Henriëtte Hustinkx Prize. He continued his studies with a postacademic course at the Jan van Eyck Academie, also in Maastricht.
Oranje Nassaulaan 12
8448 MT Heerenveen-Oranjewoud
0513-644999
info@museumbelvedere.nl
