Artwork Data
Title
Meisje op skippybal
Artist
Year
1983
Material
brons / steenachtig
Dimensions
h. 150 cm
Artwork Location
Address
Heeswijkplein, Den Haag
City district
Escamp
GPS data
52.051083052081, 4.3055709889549 View on map
Artwork Description
Text
Peter van der Meer lived and worked in The Hague, La Spezia and Carrara, among other places. Art lovers who hear the Italian place names La Spezia, Carrara and Pietrasanta immediately think of the marble caves where hundreds of artists from all over the world come to work. This also applies to Van der Meer. He was a pupil of the special marble school in Carrara. He also studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where he was taught by, for instance, the Hague artist Dirk Bus.
Although he has mastered carving in marble, Van der Meer also manifests himself as a real modeller who builds up his human figures roughly and almost sketchily in clay or wax, in order to have them cast in bronze afterwards. The sculpture 'Girl on a Skippy Ball', which brightens up the Heeswijkplein with childlike enthusiasm, is a good example of this. The forms are not smoothly finished. The skippy ball does not look like a polished ball but like a scaly cabbage or other rough organic spherical shape.
The girl proudly sticks her nose into the wind. Her body is long and lanky like that of an adolescent girl who has just had a few shoots of growth. Her spritely legs, thin arms and jaunty ponytail underline the fact that the sculptor is happy to give reality a little push in the desired direction, if by doing so he can strengthen the expressiveness of the sculpture.