KLOMPENMONUMENT | Kunst in de Stad

KLOMPENMONUMENT (HERMAN VAN SNICK)

On the occasion of 700 years of Nieuwkerken, in 1994, the monument was erected with 700 clogs. Each year one more wooden shoe was going to be added. This work of art is a tribute to an age-old craft in Nieuwkerken in which, a century ago, more than three thousand workers were employed in no fewer than 215 family clogmakers' businesses. When you think about it, you can hardly grasp how quickly times are changing, let alone how the future will look for the next generation.

HERMAN VAN SNICK

Herman Van Snick was not only a lawyer and magistrate, but also a poet and artist. His life was profoundly shaped by the times in which he lived.

During the First World War, his family moved temporarily to England. After studying law at Ghent University, Herman Van Snick settled in Antwerp as a lawyer. As a student, he was already active in Flemish student circles and wrote poetry. His first poems were published in the 1930s.

During the Second World War, he joined the resistance. He contributed to the clandestine Antwerp magazine *De Vrijheid*, in which his poems also appeared. As such, his work forms part of the distinctive resistance literature of that period.

After the war, he remained active in the legal profession. He first worked as a deputy public prosecutor and subsequently became a justice of the peace in Diksmuide, Nieuwpoort and later Vilvoorde.

But alongside his legal career, his creative side also remained a constant presence. Herman Van Snick was the artist behind the Clog Monument in Nieuwkerken. The monument commemorates a piece of local history and the everyday life of the past, when clogs were a familiar part of life for many people.

Thus, in Herman Van Snick’s work, different worlds converge: law and art, history and ordinary everyday life.