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The sculpture 'Standing and lying' has two faces. From a distance, all attention is drawn to two standing columns of stainless steel, both of which are four metres high. It is only at second glance that one notices that they are in fact not columns but angular forms. The angle indicated by the eye-catchers can also be found in a reclining version made of granite. Jan Maaskant's sculpture unites surface and space in a special way. The plateau and the rising standing forms are based entirely on geometrical principles. Systematics, structure and symmetry are the main issues here. This is why the 'severe' sculpture contrasts with the other sculptures in the garden of Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

Maaskant's sculptural intervention in the museum garden is special primarily because the traditional distinction between pedestal and sculpture has disappeared. The flat surface that serves as a support for the standing forms has become an inalienable part of the total work of art. The plane is not subordinate to the spatial elements.

Maaskant is one of the better-known Dutch sculptors who worked in the constructivist style typical of the late 1960s and 1970s. Like kindred spirits Joost Baljeu and André Volten, Maaskant opposed the abstract expressionist artists of the immediate post-war period. Whereas post-war art focused on the individual expression of one's own experience, the progressive sculptors of the following decades limited themselves primarily to the study of form. And this is reflected in their abstract, technical and sometimes even industrial sculptures.

Even though his sculptures are all about form research, Maaskant works in an intuitive way that gives his sculptures just that little bit of lyrical quality.