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During his working life, the internationally renowned artist Carel Visser has built up an extensive oeuvre that is surprisingly diverse. One would not immediately guess that in addition to this strictly geometric work, he is also the maker of informal and poetic sculptures with car windows and sheep's wool.

Nevertheless, the attentive observation of his surroundings, especially of nature, has always been the starting point for his sculptures. It formed the basis for his geometric abstract sculptures in the 1950s. Like artists such as Joost Baljeu, he tried to reduce the inner structure of nature to simple forms.
When the saints go marching in' on the Segbroeklaan dates from the second half of the 1960s. The identical beams are no longer classically composed into a balanced whole as in his earlier sculptures. Because the beams shift in relation to each other, it defies our sense of balance; it is as if they are being launched.

The sculpture is part of the 'multitudes' series that Visser has been making since 1963. The idea for this series originated in America the year before, and was inspired by the shuffling of automobile traffic. He found the title, taken from a well-known gospel song, well-suited to the American and dynamic character of the work.

With the 'multitudes', Visser tried to find another form for the classical notions of form, proportion and balance. Every material proved suitable for playing with that canon. In his later collages and sculptures, for instance, he increasingly involved elements from his surroundings, such as the car windscreen mentioned earlier, binders and sheep's wool. They were mysterious combinations, but 'what someone else does with them is not my concern', he declared.
With his approach, the independent Visser broadened the possibilities of sculpture and inspired many young artists.