Artwork Data

Title

Schoven I

Artist

Rein Draijer

Year

1957

Material

Brons

Dimensions

h. 42 cm

Artwork Location

Address

Ambachtsgaarde, 2542 Den Haag

City district

Escamp

GPS data

52.035152149015, 4.2660785847233 View on map

Artwork Description

Text

In 1956, the painter modelled a head, a self-portrait, which he called 'old-fashioned and conservative'. A year later, the bronze 'Schoven I' could stand the test of self-criticism. Rein Draijer made the sculpture, which has stood on the square near the Ambachtsgaarde in Vrederust since 1979, at the age of 58. Before that, he sometimes experimented with clay. But he did not spend much time on it. In 1980, in an interview with Max Danser for the Pulchri magazine, Drayer said about his late decision to sculpt: 'I thought, if you don't do it now, nothing will come of it'.

Until the late 1960s, Drayer gave priority to painting. He worked on a small, but high-quality oeuvre. He was interested in form and composition. He simplified visible reality in such a way that only the essence remained. This simplification went so far that it seems as if Drayer wanted to avoid having his own handwriting. Paradoxically enough, this is how the specific, alienating Drayer style came about. In a certain sense, his work influenced his pupils, including Co Westerik (1924) and Peter Struycken (1939).

With his quiet, empty, innovative work, Drayer gave the art of The Hague an impulse after the Second World War. He played an important role in the creation of the New Hague School, including as a member of the artists' group Verve (1951-1957) from 1952. When Verve fell apart, Drayer took up sculpting seriously. In the seventies and eighties, he produced abstract sculptures in wood, iron and aluminium. Initially, however, his themes were directly related to reality, just as in his painting. Drayer made sculptures of reed shears, corn sheaves, shells, stones, beach chairs and fruit. Little detail, no distortion, but reality alienated from itself by a form reduced to its essence, as we see in 'Sheaves I'. It is a near-abstraction of corn sheaves, symbolising Vrederust's rural past.

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