Out of Focus
Status
Temporary
Category
In storage
Since
01-07-2021
Explanation
Before the summer of 2021, the school board of the Annie M.G. Schmidt School had the bronze girl with bird brought to safety. Demolition of the old school building would start after the construction period, and to avoid damaging this artwork, it went into storage. The school expects to start in a new building after the summer of 2023. Because art and culture is one of the focal points of this elementary school, Leen Blom's Child with Bird will also return to the schoolyard.
Artwork Data
Artwork Location
Address
Jacob de Graefflaan, Den Haag
City district
Scheveningen
GPS data
52.086943480419, 4.2826465693115 View on map
Artwork Description
Text
The one and a half meter high sculpture "Child with a little bird", placed in 1955 next to a school building on Jacob de Graefflaan, underlines that Leen Blom stood with both feet in the figurative tradition. In his work, the sculptor showed a clear preference for depicting people caught, as it were, during their daily activities. This is also true of the girl who has (secretly?) taken the little bird out of the cage that stands next to her on the ground. She looks affectionately at the animal that carefully spreads its wings.
Dozens of sculptors who worked in The Hague in the first half of the twentieth century are indebted to the Belgian sculptor Albert Termote (1887-1978). After training at the art academy in Ghent and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, this nestor of The Hague sculpture lived in Voorburg from 1922. He produced numerous monuments, equestrian statues, portraits, figures and medals and taught many students in his studio the basics and intricacies of sculpture.
Blom was one of them. He settled permanently in The Hague in 1925, where he trained at the Royal Academy of Art and worked at Termote's studio. There his skills were finely honed and he learned to look and think in a sculptural way.