This autumn, we celebrate Evert den Hartog’s (1949) 50th anniversary as a sculptor with a special solo exhibition. The exhibition will be officially opened on Sunday 18 October at our gallery and sculpture garden in Odijk - a fitting setting in which to mark this important milestone and one that allows his three-dimensional work to be experienced at its very best.
Following the opening weekend, the exhibition will move in its entirety to Morren Galleries on the Oudegracht in Utrecht, where it will be on view from Thursday 22 October.
Half a century in bronze
Over the past fifty years, Evert den Hartog has developed a highly distinctive and instantly recognisable sculptural language. Animals provide him with an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Bulls, horses, elephants and birds are not rendered in a purely naturalistic manner, but distilled to their most characteristic forms, postures and movements.
His sculptures reveal an exceptional sense of stylisation and balance. The influence of Art Deco can be recognised in their elegant lines, flowing contours and at times almost geometric simplification of form. At the same time, his work demonstrates a profound understanding of classical sculpture and anatomy. Den Hartog’s command of his medium allows him the freedom to bend reality to his own artistic purpose: legs are elongated, bodies stretched and movements exaggerated. The result is a world that remains familiar, yet is unmistakably his own.
A recurring interplay between weight and weightlessness, movement and balance gives many of his sculptures their particular sense of tension. In his birds especially, heavy bronze appears almost to shed its mass: they balance on a single leg, seem to float freely through space or touch one another only at the tips of their wings. Den Hartog continually searches for that fleeting instant at which a movement reaches its greatest tension – and, as it were, freezes it in bronze. It is this seemingly effortless equilibrium that gives his sculptures their vitality and remarkable spatial presence.
What makes his work so appealing, however, is that technical mastery never comes at the expense of lightness. His animals often possess a playful quality, a subtle wit or something unexpectedly human. In Den Hartog’s hands, monumentality and elegance coexist effortlessly with humour and joie de vivre.
Evert den Hartog has been a familiar and much-loved presence at Morren Galleries for decades. His remarkable craftsmanship, boundless creativity and distinctive artistic signature have earned him an enthusiastic following among collectors and art lovers alike. For us as a gallery, this anniversary is also a personal occasion: we feel privileged that our long-standing and fruitful collaboration with Evert has developed into a warm friendship over the years.
With this exhibition, we celebrate not only fifty years of sculpture, but above all an artist who, half a century into his career, continues to create with the same curiosity, pleasure and imaginative spirit.
