VERBONDENHEID | Kunst in de Stad

VERBONDENHEID (WERNER HEYNDRICKX)

In the Moerlandstraat in front of the hospital buildings, we can admire a work of Werner Heyndrickx, a sculptor from Sint-Niklaas. It expresses hope and is named ‘Verbondenheid’. It is as if his figures emerge out of the soil, not as individuals but as people in unity, intensely linked.

As a child, the artist lived through the Great War (1914-1918). People of his generation knew the Flemish soil is drenched with the blood of hundreds of thousands of young, and innocent men. He was a sensitive artist expressing, in his youth, a sign of strong protest against this slaughter.

This sculpture group was designed by a gifted artist whose father was a stonemason. The compact, almost monolithic concept is a typical characteristic of his work and radiates enormous strength. However, the work has never been executed in stone.

Kunst in de Stad discovered the original plaster model in his studio under a pile of debris. In order to maintain each imprint from the hand of the artist it was decided, in collaboration with the hospital, to have the work cast in bronze.

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.