DE ZWEMMERS (WERNER HEYNDRICKX)
This plaster work is the model for the actual bas-relief in white stone, on display in the swimming pool Sinbad. The statue was first modelled in clay, then cast in plaster and finally transferred to the white stone with the help of a compass. It is therefore not a ‘direct carving’.
The Bas-relief ‘de Zwemmers’ (‘The Swimmers’) does not bear witness to the realistic style Werner Heyndrickx uses in many of his works and especially in his portraits. Here the rather synthesizing style, which refers to Ernest Wijnants, is clearly discernable.
Distributed over the surface of the bas-relief, some silhouettes are represented in different poises and gestures. On top lies a stretched, swimming figure with bathing cap. Underneath a female stretches out her hands to a diver. Between these two a swimmer figures with a steady stroke. Sketchily applied lines suggest the water’s swell .
The dominating figures are the woman and the diver. They keep the composition in balance. The parallel lines of arms and legs are in harmony. The anatomy of their physically imposing bodies is reduced to the essential shapes with some subtle details, enhancing the tension.
HEYNDRICKX Werner (1909-1986)
Werner Heyndrickx was a sculptor of portraits and figures. His father, Jozef Heyndrickx, was a stonemason. Education at the academies of Sint-Niklaas and Antwerp and at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Antwerp (studio of E. Wijnants). Teacher of sculpture at the Municipal Academy of Fine Arts in Sint-Niklaas and the Higher Institute in Antwerp
His workshop was situated near the Tereken cemetery in Sint-Niklaas. For bronze casting he always worked with Achiel Vindevogel in Zwijnaarde. He attached major attention to the patina of a statue.
Particularly in Werner Heyndrickx's early works one can still clearly sense the influence of his teachers Arthur Dupon and especially Ernest Wijnants: in the monumentality and in the reduction of an image to a number of stylized surfaces . This rather synthesizing style is recognisable in the sculptures of the apostles he made for the church of ‘Kristus Koning’ in Sint-Niklaas. Even though heads, hands and feet have been executed with precision and detail, the vertical folds are stylised. The same approach can be seen in the sculptures ‘Contemplatie’ and ‘Familie’.
Werner Heyndrickx’s portraits exhale sharp observation. They are the result of a relentless search for an accurate resemblance and for the subject’s character.
He took part in many exhibitions in Belgium and abroad: Antwerp, Ghent, Liège, Namur, Paris, Prague and Bratislava. Prizes : the 'Godecharle Prize', the 'Van Lerius Prize', the 'Doutrolon de Try Prize' and the 'Prize of the Province of East Flanders for Sculpture'.
Kunst in de Stad displays some fifteen works by this sculptor.
Kunst in de Stad, September 16th 1989