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A remedy against heaviness', wrote art historian Jetteke Bolten in 1982 about the work of The Hague artist Jan Snoeck. Colour is part of my sense of work', he said about it himself. That is abundantly clear.

Snoeck's colourful human figures with large noses are the best known, but there is also little doubt about the maker of the 'Haan' on the Escamplaan. The seated figure, built up from glazed ceramic strips, is unmistakably Snoeck's. His sculptures are cheerful and accessible. His sculptures look cheerful and accessible. He has repeatedly been invited for commissions in public spaces.

The 'Rooster' was already in the possession of the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1970. That year, the artist exhibited a series of 'worm-shaped turnings in clay'. He had only just discovered the possibilities of ceramics. The worm-shaped turnings were the result of experiments with casting concrete, plaster and polyester that he carried out in the early sixties. After his training with, among others, the famous sculptor Zadkine in Paris, Snoeck was looking for a personal visual language and especially for more colour.
Polyester offered that possibility, but the substance was sticky and smelly. Ceramics offered a solution. Via the Porceleyne Fles in Delft, Snoeck came into contact in the mid-1960s with Henk Trumpie and Jacques van Gaalen, founders of Structure 68. With the support of this now renowned ceramics workshop in The Hague, he realised numerous ideas.

Snoeck, incidentally, did not only work spatially. Gouaches, drawings, carpets and T-shirts also sprang from his brain. Colour was always an important element for the artist who, like famous colourists such as Cézanne and Matisse, spent a lot of time in the south of France.