Artwork Data

Title

Amazone

Artist

Bram Roth

Year

1960

Material

brons

Dimensions

250 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Conradkade, Den Haag

City district

Scheveningen

GPS data

52.085015968821, 4.2739780675826 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

In 1951, he signed the founding manifesto. This made sculptor Bram Roth a member of the artists' group Verve (1951-1957). The group of fifteen painters and five sculptors wanted to function as a counterpart to Pulchri Studio and the Haagse Kunstkring. The exhibitions of these associations provided a heterogeneous picture of art from The Hague. The manifesto states that the like-minded members of Verve wanted to present a homogeneous image, 'while maintaining individual differences in talent and temperament'.

The group was ambitious. The members strived for 'more fantasy and imagination, more verve' in art. Theo Bitter, one of the founders, did not hesitate to call Verve the Hague answer to Cobra. Yet they were worlds apart. The international Cobra cry of 'raw, direct, deliberately primitive, colourful and extrovert' was met with a subdued response from the city in the Hague: 'civilised, sensitive, a mixture of light abstract and stylised figurative', according to Rudi Oxenaar, former director of the Kröller-Müller Museum, in 1997.
An example of this stylised figurative art can be found on the Conradkade on Houtrustbrug. There we find 'Amazon' by Roth dating from 1960. The bronze has a strong vertical axis due to the elongation of the female body and the horse's neck. Especially the amazon, with her small head on a huge conical neck, is out of all proportion. Despite this, all parts are in harmony and we see an elegant rider, who remains in balance while her horse throws its head back.

It is obvious to compare Roth's sculpture with the equestrian statues of the famous Italian sculptor Marino Marini (1901-1980). Especially since one of those was placed in The Hague in 1959. But that strongly abstracted equestrian statue is far removed from Roth's rendition. Moreover, Roth probably had his model ready by then. Roth has none of the intense drama that characterises Marini's equestrian statues. Roth places man and beast in a carefree world, in which there is no room for pain or suffering.

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