Artwork Data

Title

Balspel

Artist

Gerard van Remmen

Year

1979

Material

Brons

Dimensions

h. 135 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Parkzijde, Den Haag

City district

Escamp

GPS data

52.036973568871, 4.2581369763004 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

The two ballplayers at the sports hall on the Parkside are balancing on a slender column several metres high. Because they perform their actions at great height, they acquire something invincible. Moreover, sculptor Gerard van Remmen has styled the action so elegantly that the two ballplayers' exercise is more like a ballet, the choreography of which is performed with care and a sense of harmony. Apart from their affinity with dance movements, the postures evoke associations with a balancing act on a tightrope.

The ball players are almost one and a half metres high, but their position on the tall column makes them appear more slender and elongated than they actually are. Van Remmen has pulled out all the stops to depict harmony, balance, visual tension, graceful action, dynamics, duality and unity.

Van Remmen belongs to the post-war generation of sculptors from The Hague who strived to integrate art into the public domain. With his colleagues Dirk Bus and Bram Roth, he was responsible for various construction sculptures in The Hague's outdoor areas. These are sculptures and reliefs whose subject matter is often linked to classical mythology. Their formal language leans heavily towards the principles of classical sculpture. The elevated body positions are particularly striking.

Well-known are the construction plastics that Bus, Roth and Van Remmen made for the former city hall of The Hague at Burgemeester De Monchyplein in the early 1960s. Van Remmen drew the statues Pomona, Flora, Athena and Ceres at the entrance of the building. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and worked mainly in a figurative style, although some of his abstract sculptures are also known to link up with the architecture with which they consciously enter into a relationship. The artist concentrated on portraits, figures and reliefs and he made resistance monuments in Voorburg and Maassluis.

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