Exhibitions

An installation encompassing models and sketches to show the material process involved in the development of a recent sculpture commission.

Auke de Vries is widely regarded as Holland’s leading sculptor. He began as a painter and made his first sculpture in 1968. He has been professor of Graphic Art at the Royal Academy of Art, Den Haag, followed by professor of Sculpture at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.

Auke de Vries has exhibited regularly and widely throughout Europe since the late 1950s. In 1990, Skulpturen, a major retrospective of his work was held at the Museum Wiesbaden. In the catalgoue accompanying Skulpturen, Auke de Vries’s approach to making public art works is described as follows:

'He does not approach them as an artist only, but takes on two or more parts. The part of the citizen whose imaginary wishes, dreams and feeling he explores at the beginning of each project. And also the part of the patron whose orders he usually reformulates in reply to the expectations of the public. Only then does Auke de Vries set to work with his creative power and sensitivity, his vivacity, and sometimes his light irony. An artist’s position which, in a world of vanities and grand gestures, seems exceptionally modest. But which gets possible on the basis of an - in the best sense of the word - elite self-commiment to highest quality.

His exhibition for the Henry Moore Institute, concentrated upon the mental process involved in the development of a comissioned sculpture for the N.A.I in Rotterdam, completed in early Summer 1994. Through sketches and models it is possible to follow the evolution of the sculpture from the concept to physical fact