Carel Visser, 'Untitled', 1994

Carel Visser, Untitled, 1994
The Hague City Center: Spui - Grote Marktstraat - Kalvermarkt

A leading figure in Dutch sculpture, internationally renowned, is Carel Visser (1928). His visual language reflects a liberated world of autonomous objects. As a boy, he learned welding, woodworking, and other craft skills in his father’s construction business. Additionally, he developed a unique passion for the art of assemblage. He combines items that seemingly have nothing to do with each other into a new, authentic, and functionless whole, intended solely to be viewed.

Visser is a true constructor. He welds pieces of iron together to form a torso or an animal figure and transforms wooden mooring posts into birds. Over the years, Visser’s work has frequently changed in form. While his early sculptures can be described as expressionistic, his works gradually became more abstract. Initially, these were abstracted natural motifs in iron, later evolving into totally abstract double forms and his so-called 'salami sculptures,' solid iron beams cut into slices. In the 1960s, the cube was central to his work. It wasn't until the 1980s that Visser moved away from geometry. Since then, he has created mostly intuitive assemblages made from materials such as car tires, sheep wool, wood, and feathers. Throughout Visser’s oeuvre, nature remains a source of inspiration.

This is also true for Visser’s pedestal sculpture. “In Switzerland, I once saw snow on a fir tree,” Visser recounts in an interview with NRC Handelsblad (June 17, 1994). “Such a tree is a wonderfully structured thing. I thought: yes, that’s one for me. I’m going to turn that into a sculpture. The sculpture only represents the snow; I left out the tree.” Using polystyrene, Visser stacked his snow-covered fir, which was then cast in bronze. The casting channels remain visible. With this pedestal sculpture, he has revisited his early works. Unlike the rest of his oeuvre, these are oriented vertically rather than horizontally.