Dutch sculptor Mari Andriessen

Mari Andriessen was a Dutch artist whose sculptures depict people and events of the 20th century in the Netherlands. His statues and memorials, in particular, pay tribute to victims of the Holocaust and the events of World War II.

Background

Mari Andriessen was born in 1897 in Haarlem. His Catholic family were artistic: his mother was a painter, his father was a musician and his brothers went on to become a musician and a composer.

He attended the Haarlem Applied Arts School and then the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, followed by the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich, Germany.

Andriessen began his career as a sculptor in the years preceding World War II, receiving commissions for sculptures in churches and the new train station at Utrecht. During the Nazi Germany occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945, he was not allowed to receive commissions and was banned from exhibiting.

When the war ended, many municipalities wanted to install memorials. Andriessen's first war memorial was unveiled in Heemstede in 1948. He became a sought-after artist for such monuments, sculpting dozens of statues and memorials.

Let's take a look at six of Andriessen's sculptures.

Man in front of the Firing Squad

Man voor het Vuurpeloton (Man in front of the Firing Squad) commemorates the lives of 15 members of the Dutch resistance who were executed at Frederikspark in Haarlem in 1945. The statue is almost two metres high, and was unveiled in 1949. Willem Termetz, a carpenter and friend of Andriessen's, was the model for the statue.

The Dock Worker

De Dokwerker (The Dock Worker) was installed in Amsterdam in 1952.

It remembers the February Strike of 1941, a powerful act of resistance by Dutch workers against the Nazi occupation during World War II. The memorial immortalises the defiance, resilience and unity of the workers.

Cornelis Lely

Cornelis Lely was a Dutch politician and engineer, who oversaw the construction of the Zuiderzee works, which reclaimed land from the sea.

In 1953, a statue of Lely by Andriessen was constructed on the Afsluitdijk, the dam and causeway which encloses the Zuiderzee making it an inland lake rather than open sea.

The Maastricht spirit

Not all of Andriessen's sculptures depict real people. His 1962 sculpture Mestreechter Geis pays tribute to character traits of the people of Maastricht, their sense of humour and how they live, drink and sing.

Queen Wilhelmina

Wilhelmina was Queen of the Netherlands between 1890 and 1948. She reigned through World War I, economic crises in the 1930s and World War II.

Andriessen produced a number of statues of Wilhelmina. One was displayed in the town hall of Velsen in 1963, while another was erected at a hospital in Amsterdam in 1967 and another in the Wilhelminapark in Utrecht in 1968.

Anne Frank

In 1975, Andriessen made a small bronze statue of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl from Amsterdam who kept a diary in which she documented life in hiding under Nazi persecution.

Andriessen worked on the statue for a long time, first making it with a seated pose and later standing. He wrote: 'It's actually the first time that, when such a statue goes away,... I would prefer to keep it!'

The statue stands at the Westerkerk (Western Church) in Amsterdam, near the Anne Frank House where Anne and her family hid.

Andriessen worked mostly with stone as the medium for his sculpture. Many of his statues are free-standing, placing their subjects on plinths with little other architectural details. They symbolise the resilience of people in the 20th century who showed great strength in facing adversity. During World War II, Andriessen had been involved with the Dutch resistance, bringing additional meaning to his sculpture.

During his life, Andriessen won many awards and honours. Late in his career, he was often spoken of as 'the national sculptor' of the Netherlands. Mari Andriessen died, aged 82, in 1979.