Zoetermeer

When, in the seventies of the twentieth century, Zoetermeer in The Netherlands was destined to become a growth town, public sculpture became a hot item there too. For a school in the district Buytenwegh De Leyens, Lucien den Arend made six concrete sculptures comprised of two groups - one with three concave sculptures and one with two convex ones.

p.i.l.l.s. - two concave sculptures - 1976|1977 - concrete - Ø300x100cm

The sculptor has used color in his work. Aside from the natural colors of materials, which are usually a logical and strong side of a given material, he has used neutral colors and in some cases red, which complements the natural color of foliage.

"green - a most difficult color for my sculpture"

"The school had contacted me, a year or so ago, about restoring the sculptural elements. They had suffered along with other public sculptures during the thirty years of their existence. The Dutch have been sculpture haters since the 'beeldenstorm" during which most of the sculpture of the Catholic Church was destroyed by the burgers throughout Holland.. People try to chip off pieces, deface the surface by leaving their mark in any way available to them or leave their scent in some other way. I venture to say that fifty percent of the population hates sculpture. So when the Zoetermeer school notified me that they were going to fix them up I readjusted my ideas about the Dutch appreciation of art. I'd asked the school to send me photographs of the sculptures after the job was done. They did, and I could see what the result was - green for the convex sculptures! I would never have suggested that color in the event I even wanted to color these sculptures. I wrote them that I was certain that soon they would find the need to do something about this color themselves - and asked them to re-paint them in the same neutral color as the three concave sculptures on the other side of the school building."

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