Artwork Data
Artwork Location
Address
Professor B. M. Teldersweg, Den Haag
City district
Scheveningen
GPS data
52.0978145605984, 4.2936883552723 View on map
Artwork Description
Text
There are people who do not like abstract art very much. You can't see anything in it' is the criticism. In that case, the appreciation of art is linked to its recognisability. On the edge of the lawn on the Teldersweg is an abstract work of art by Hans Kleyweg: Granito no. 9. It is a white cement sculpture with pieces of granite, smoothly polished into an organic, round shape. An opening in the form offers a view of the water feature behind it.
Kleyweg's works are reminiscent of the organically shaped sculptures of famous British sculptors such as Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) and Henry Moore (1898-1986). Characteristic are the large openings. Matter and recess together determine the sculpture. The artists mentioned, in their turn, based themselves on developments in the work of colleagues who preceded them. Cubism had broken through the three-dimensional form and rearranged it into new images. Surrealists used distortions to create bizarre dream worlds. Typical for artists like Dali and Tanguy was that the forms became organic; liquid it seemed. Often there was a reference to eroticism in the design.
Eroticism was also an important source of inspiration for Kleyweg. In his search for the ideal form, the female torso was his source of inspiration. On the Thorbeckelaan stands a sculpture that evokes associations with a woman's hips and thighs. Yet eroticism is not the subject. Kleyweg is concerned with creating tension in the curves and the relationship between concrete form and enclosed space. His starting point is therefore completely abstract. But in order to assess the effectiveness of his works, he tests them against the natural language of form.