VERBONDENHEID

VERBONDENHEID (WERNER HEYNDRICKX)

We return to the crossraods at the park, cross the street and walk into the Moerlandstraat, in the direction of the AZ Nikolaas hospital.

In the lawn, next to the footpath 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 surface 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 has been 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 AZ Nikolaas, to have the work cast in bronze.

 

HEYNDRICKX Werner (1909-1986)

Werner Heyndrickx was a realist sculptor of portraits and figures. He got his education at the Academies of Sint-Niklaas and Antwerpen and the National Institute of fine Arts in Antwerp (studio E. Wijnants). He was a sculpture teacher at the Academy of fine Arts in Sint-Niklaas and the Higher Institute in Antwerpen (1965).

Prizes: ‘Godecharleprijs’, ‘Van Leriusprijs’, ‘Prize Doutrolonde de Try’ and ‘Prize of the Province Oost-Vlaanderen’ for sculpture.

 

 

Kunst in de Stad - September 24th 2009