Zadkine and Gabo in Rotterdam

Author(s): Joan Pachner

Source: Art Journal , Winter, 1994, Vol. 53, No. 4, Sculpture in Postwar Europe and
America, 1945-59 (Winter, 1994), pp. 79-85
Published by: CAA

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/777567

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 Zadkine and Gabo
in Rotterdam

Joan Pachner

On May 14, 1940, Nazi warplanes bombed Rotter- When he was invited to participate in the first postwar
dam, decimating its commercial center; 650 acres show of modern French sculpture that traveled in 1947 to
were razed, or 60 percent of the bustling port city. Berlin and Munich, Zadkine decided to send his new sculp-
79
Holland surrendered to Germany the next day. Only one week ture; he hoped that the citizens in one of those German cities
later the planning to rebuild the city center began. Rebuild- might commission the work as a public sculpture.5s Unfor-
ing began in earnest around 1949 and was essentially com- tunately, the original terra-cotta was broken during the run of
pleted by 1957.1 What had been a densely populated inner the show. Rather than abandon the project, he decided to
city characterized by "houses . . . built back to back in make another version in plaster that was four feet high, twice
labyrinthine alleys" was to be reconstructed with broad ave- as tall as the first.6 This second maquette, cast in bronze,
nues and open vistas.2 During this period two important and was included in a solo show of Zadkine's work at the Stedelijk
very different public sculptures were erected in Rotterdam. Museum in Amsterdam, in early 1948. A contingent of
One was The Destroyed City, an anguished, expressive work Rotterdam citizens visited the exhibition, met Zadkine, and
by Ossip Zadkine (conceived 1946, commissioned 1951, made preliminary inquiries into the possibility of erecting
dedicated 1953;figs. 1 and 2); the other was an untitled 85- The Destroyed City to commemorate the city's inhabitants.
foot-high openwork construction outside the new Bijenkorf Among this group, Zadkine later recalled, was a broad-
department store by Naum Gabo (1953-57; fig. 3). These shouldered man with blue-gray eyes who was a wealthy
monuments are important as landmarks in the progressive businessman and modern art collector-Dr. G. van de Wal,
integration of modern sculpture into twentieth-century cul- director of Rotterdam's Bijenkorf department store, a firm
ture. The two sculptures were realized by disparate routes owned by a Jewish family that had survived the war. In
and carried different meanings in the context of 1950s ideo- gratitude to their Christian friends and faithful employees,
logical debates. the owners of the Bijenkorf wanted to donate a monument to
Ossip Zadkine, a Jew born in Russia in 1890, moved to the city, and van de Wal initiated the process.7 In the winter
London in 1906 and settled in Paris in 1909. The French of 1949-50, when a Zadkine retrospective was organized at
the Boymans-van Beunigen Museum in Rotterdam, the
capital became his adopted home. In 1941 he took refuge
from World War II in the United States, returning to Paris in maquette of The Destroyed City was displayed promi-
bronze
1945. In the next year Zadkine was on his way to visit a friend
nently in the center of the exhibition hall. At this time van de
in Holland, and when the train stopped in Rotterdam he Walwas
made the official offer of donation on behalf of the
stunned by the total devastation, by the evidence of annihila-
Bijenkorf, though it was done anonymously.8
tion in the city: "From the station onwards, there was nothingWhile the citizens of Rotterdam wanted a memorial to
but a vast desert."3 the war, many questioned whether or not it should be this
Rotterdam's emptiness haunted him when he arrived at sculpture. Zadkine's final work ended up being an anti-
his friend's house on the border of Holland and Germany.classical, twice life-size figure bending at the knees, head
There Zadkine joined a family reunion of survivors and heard flung back, mouth open in a cry, arms outstretched toward
stories of the war that he had escaped.4 These experiencesthe sky, hands bent back at the wrist. A combination of
surely amplified his response to what he had just seen. When
Cubist faceting and Expressionist distortions contributes to
Zadkine returned to Paris he made a two-foot-high clay the work's impact of extreme horror. The supplicant gesture,
figure with distorted anatomy and a cut-out "heart." Thisit has been suggested, recalls a central element of Picasso's
statuette was the basis for the monumental Destroyed City.
Guernica (fig. 4).9 Zadkine's figure itself is maimed by a

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80

F I G. 1 Ossip Zadkine, The Destroyed City (side view), 1946-53, FIG. 2 Ossip Zadkine, The Destroyed City (back view), 1946-53,
bronze, 20 feet high. Rotterdam. bronze, 20 feet high. Rotterdam.

carved-out void in its torso-a visual allegory of the razed
city. While he had incorporated an element of transparency
in other figural works, in no other design does the void
function so poignantly. Rising from the base alongside the
figure is a broken and dead tree stump. This classical
symbol of destruction seems to provide ironically a physical
support for the figure. The work manages to allude to tradi-
tional statuary, while at the same time underscoring the
distance between this very modern, tortured figure and the
relatively calm images usually associated with the Greco-
Roman legacy.
Debate raged in the Dutch press about the appropriate-
ness of The Destroyed City as a civic memorial for well over a
year before the work was officially commissioned.'1 Zadkine
did not create an idealized figure, a god, or a victorious hero.
It did not look like anyone's experience of a war memorial: the
image was intended to be commensurate with the horror of the
event. Some lamented that the work was too focused on pain
and did not provide an uplifting or heroic model; they felt that
it was ugly and depressing. Even the architect J. J. P. Oud
asserted his opinion, writing that while he personally pre-
ferred more harmonious art, the power of Zadkine's work was
appropriate to the subject commemorated."
The piece was finally commissioned in early 1951.
Arthur Isaac, one of the Bijenkorf owners, probably paid for
the sculpture itselfl2 including an honorarium to the artist,
while the city paid for creation and erection of the statue's
base and the work's installation.13 The twenty-foot-tall
bronze figure atop a high marble base was cast in Paris and
unveiled at its prominent site on the northern end of the
Leuvehaven at the city's port, on May 15, 1953. According to
one source, "Some have suggested that one day when recon-
struction is complete the statue may be Rotterdam's only sign
pointing clearly back to the ravages of May, 1940."14
The image of a physically damaged but surviving
figure was a noteworthy international postwar phenomenon; it
was acknowledged as an appropriate human response to the
recent suffering. A short list of sculptors who created

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 maimed or expressively distorted figures at the time includes
Germaine Richier and C6sar in France, Reg Butler, Lynn
Chadwick, and Kenneth Armitage in England, and Theodore
Roszak in America. But Zadkine's Destroyed City is distin-
guished by the fact that it was built as a public monument.
The expressively twisted, anguished figure rendered in a
style that had recently been banned and vilified by the Nazis
stood as a symbol of survival in the middle of an urban
center, not in a museum or a gallery.
By 1953, when Zadkine's statue was dedicated, the
rebuilding of Rotterdam was well underway. A central part of
the reconstruction was centered on widening the Coolsingel,
a main commercial artery that long ago had become a filled-
in canal. The city planners, led by Cornelius van Traa,
decided to straighten the avenue and transform it into the first
pedestrian shopping district that was fully integrated into a
city.
The crowning and final element of the area was to be
the new Bijenkorf department store. The old store, designed
81
in 1930 by the Dutch architect Willem Dudok, had been
located at the southern end of the Coolsingel, toward the
harbor. When the building had opened it was acclaimed for
its modern design, especially the facade including contin-
uous glass windows that allowed natural light into the store.
Although the store had been severely damaged, it was not
obliterated in the 1940 raid. It was torn down to accommodate
the planners' desire to straighten the Coolsingel-ironically
it had survived the bombing but not the replanning.'5 The
company envisioned a new state-of-the-art store on a superb
site at the end of the Coolsingel, the beginning of the new
shopping area. Marcel Breuer, together with the Dutchman
A. Elzas, designed the new Bijenkorf as a rectangular box
with only a few outside windows (exactly opposite the earlier
Dudock design).16 The exterior was sheathed in travertine,
incised on two sides with a hexagonal motif, appropriate for a
beehive-the meaning of the Dutch word bijenkorf.
Three other buildings on the Coolsingel had survived
the 1940 blitz; these remained the touchstones for the ave-
nue's reconstruction. One of the structures, the brick Atlanta
Hotel, was just down the street from the new Bijenkorf. The
hotel extended farther out into the street than did the recently
designed department store, which conformed to the building
line that had been designated by the city planners. However,
the planners, seeking a unified vista, insisted that the new
structure conform to the outer line of the hotel on the next
corner. This necessitated either an addition to Breuer's build-

ing (which would transform it to an L-shaped structure) or the

introduction of an independent element thirteen feet deep,
such as a sculpture, to fill and define the additional space.
Breuer did not want to change his design, and the Bijenkorf
owners did not want to forfeit their prime spot, so Gabo,

FIG. 3 Naum Gabo, Bijenkorf Construction, 1953-57, prestressed concrete,

steel ribs, stainless steel, bronze wire, and marble, 85 feet high. Rotterdam.

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82
FI . 4 Pablo Picasso, Guernica (detail), 1936, oil on canvas, 1371/2 x 3053/4
inches. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
known for his interest in creating sculptures without tradi-
tional mass and volume, was contacted to design a sculpture
to fill the demarcated space-sixty feet high, forty-five feet
wide, and twelve feet deep."7 Interestingly, the decision to
approach Gabo came in part from van de Wal, the same man
who had organized the commission of Zadkine's work. 18
Although the department store was designed first and
the sculpture was an afterthought, Gabo was deeply moved at
having been granted the opportunity to build a monumental
Constructivist sculpture in Europe. In the early 1950s he felt
overlooked as a major living artist and was desperate for
recognition.'9 He was particularly upset when his entry in
the 1953 international competition to build a Monument to the
Unknown Political Prisoner was awarded only one of several
second-place prizes to Butler's winning entry.20 According
to Gabo's friend and mentor Herbert Read, "the fact that it
expressed hope rather than despair was greatly in its favour,"
but the judges ultimately felt his submission was too ab-
stract, lacking a humanist (i.e., figurative) element.21
In fact, controversy swarmed around the competition
because most of the winning entries were abstract. For
instance, John Berger, art critic for the New Statesman in
London, disparaged most of the works on view, including
Gabo's, because he felt the emotions they expressed were too
general and sentimental. He also stated that the images were
insufficiently affirmative, that the artists had given in too
easily to despair. Berger was numbed by the preponderance
of proposals that he felt were "shapes without meaning ... not
unlike sounds without words."22
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Ironically, while still in England, Gabo had consid-
ered making a figurative monument to commemorate victims
of Nazi concentration camps. Yet he felt he had to purge that
image before arriving at his proposal for the Unknown Politi-
cal Prisoner competition. He remained firm in his belief that
a universal statement could be made only with an abstract
work. For Gabo, figuration was regressive and left him prone
to sentimentality and cliche. It was only through abstract
form that he felt he could create an artistically meaningful
statement. He got that chance in Rotterdam.
From the very beginning, Gabo's Rotterdam construc-
tion evolved from circumstances that were completely differ-
ent from those that spawned Zadkine's. First of all, the work
was commissioned in relation to a building that had already
been constructed. And second, while the sculpture would be
in a public place, Gabo had to answer not to the citizens of
Rotterdam, but to the town planners, the department store
representatives, and the architect.
Gabo's first design for the Bijenkorf space, delivered in
September 1954, was a multipart curvilinear bas-relief pro-
jecting out from the building facade (fig. 5).23 Its central
form was reminiscent of his unrealized 1949 project for the
lobby of Esso Oil Corporation at Rockefeller Center in New
York. Gabo was pleased with this design. But, while the town
planners themselves had suggested that Gabo create an
appendage to the building, they rejected this proposal re-
portedly because it did not completely fill the space demar-
cated.24 Bitter, Gabo blamed van Traa, who he wrote "sees
himself as the Dutch Housemann [sic]."25
But Breuer and the Bijenkorf representatives wanted
and needed Gabo to have another chance, and Gabo was
willing to accommodate his client. Read also encouraged
him, writing that this was indeed Gabo's chance "to reassert
your leadership in the Constructivist movement."26 In No-
vember 1954 Gabo was commissioned again, this time to
create a freestanding sculpture to be set several yards away
from the building.27 The second proposal derived clearly
from his recent Unknown Political Prisoner submission. A
new vertical design was approved by the end of 1955; the
sculpture was dedicated in May 1957.
When viewed head on (which is rare because it sits
atop a pedestal and is therefore often seen from a worm's-eye
perspective), the tall bronze-colored sculpture appears to
have symmetrically bowed elements at the side that twist
before being pulled back together and joined at the top by a
horizontal element that echoes the roof of Breuer's building.
The thicker exterior contours are filled in by a combination of
horizontal rods and a steel mesh, creating the effect of a
membrane. In the center of the structure, rising about one-
third its height, is an upwardly thrusting abstract element
that attaches to the bowed framework. When viewed from
below, the work appears seductively curvaceous and confus-
ing in its form.
According to Gabo, however, the eighty-five-foot-high
 Bijenkorf sculpture was based on the structure and image of
a tree, complete with its trunk, roots, and branches:

The organic structure in the world of plants provided me the

solution for the new conception which I needed. There in the
structure of a tree ... lies a structural principle which was, as
far as I know, neglected ... once this principle became evident
to me, the image of the whole sculpture evolved out of it
naturally.28

The "tree" needed up-to-date technology to come into being.

A model was tested for three months before the stresses of the
construction could be fully understood.29 The work was
rooted underground, attached to the department store's foun-
dations in order to anchor it securely to its spot. The stainless
steel and bronze-wire piece stood on a base of prestressed
concrete that was sheathed in marble. The base functioned

symbolically as the base of the "tree."

More architectonic than organic in feeling, the tree
image is all but impossible for the uninitiated to apprehend.
83
Various nicknames have been given to the sculpture, includ-
ing "the Thing," "the Banana," "the Gold Tower," and "the
Flower." Berger thought it looked like "the skeleton of a ship's
prow pointed at the sky-a space ship?"'30 Gabo himself
must have realized this, for despite his detailed explanations
F IG. 5 Naum Gabo, First Bijenkorf Proposal: Linear Relief Construction, 1954,
from Steven A. Nash and J6rn Merkert, eds., Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of
about imagery, he also articulated a more comprehensible,
Constructivism, exh. cat. (London: Tate Gallery, 1987), cat. no. 66.
general goal: "I have tried to express the indomitable spirit of
the people of Rotterdam and the miracle of a modern city
specifically the ambition to make sculpture relevant to soci-
rising from the rubble."3 The tree symbolized society's
survival and regeneration. ety's needs, and designed directly in relationship to architec-
tural surroundings. It is also, in many ways, an extension of
The Bijenkorf sculpture must be understood as part of
Gabo's early projects, like the 1922 Column (rebuilt 1938;
Gabo's burgeoning interest in the structure of nature. Around
1936 he began to combine curvilinear and crystalline motifs
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), reflecting his
tendency to create symbolic rather than practical forms. It
into his work, abandoning the architectonic structure that
had dominated his earlier designs. He eschewed the Eiffelwas this proclivity that had always separated Gabo from the
Tower as the paragon of techno-aesthetic achievement and
productivists Alexandre Rodchenko and Vladimir Tatlin in
the 1920s.
replaced it with "a different structural principle, more flexible
and more adaptable to the free flow of imaginative forms ... The huge freestanding construction, as tall as an
Nature.'"32 eight-story building, does not overwhelm its site. It appears
The organo-Constructivist image that integrates likely that the commissioners felt it was appropriate to have a
nature-based imagery with a geometric vocabulary has a work with technological connotations in the middle of the
place in the history of Russian twentieth-century art, dating rebuilt metropolis.3" The sculpture is an integral part of the
back to the work of artist Mikhail Matyushin in 1911.33 Yet fabric of the city, simultaneously evoking its past, existing in
Gabo's composition must also be considered in the context of the present, and pointing to its future. In this sense, the
the larger aesthetic postwar movement often referred to as Bijenkorf building, considered as a unit with Gabo's con-
vitalism, a general term that refers to nature-based sculp- struction, anticipates contemporary schemes by Peter Eisen-
tural imagery. The trend began earlier in the century with man that use new structures to evoke the earlier history of a
Henri Bergson, but gathered aesthetic steam in the 1950s, in site.

the years after the rawness of the war's aftermath began to
fade. 34 Gabo himself had promoted this alliance between his
own construction and nature, but a related spirit can be
detected in works by artists as diverse as Richard Lippold,
Roszak, and Harry Bertoia.
The Bijenkorf construction was Gabo's first realized
public work to embody the original spirit of Constructivism,
Since its dedication, the Bijenkorf sculpture has been
a central figure in the debate about the relative success or
failure of postwar Constructivism. Leftist critics Berger, in
1960, and Benjamin Buchloh, in 1990, used Gabo's Bi-
jenkorf construction as evidence to support their view that
Constructivism failed to live up to its original revolutionary
promise, or premise. 36 In contrast, the most prominent advo-

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 cate of Gabo's work, Read, whose Jungian-based theories taken about the material, which is steel dipped in bronze.
emphasized the universality of abstract form, felt the sculp- Buchloh viewed the wire-mesh fill as a duplicitous stylistic
ture affirmed his own belief in the transformative powers of device rather than a functional element, evoking the image of
abstract art.37 tension and structural function without being essential to the
Read saw Gabo as a leading creator of "monuments of a physical integrity of the piece. The open mesh is, however, an
new civilization," as a beacon of stability who "in an age of effective design solution that enabled the artist to create the
confusion, of distraction and of despair, has remained faith- illusion of lightness and transparency in spite of the sculp-
ful to a vision of transcendental order."38 Not surprisingly, he ture's physical bulk.
compared the Bijenkorf construction to the aspirational Although Gabo asserted, "My only dream . .. is to be
structure of a Gothic cathedral. In contrast, Berger objected free of the market and to dedicate myself to the task of
to Read's assessment of the Bijenkorf structure as "an image making constructivism into a public art," he was not free-
of universal beauty," asserting instead that the work was his work was inevitably constricted by the system that en-
essentially decorative, a sculpture of opportunity not pas- abled it to exist.44 While one might see the Bijenkorf piece as
sion. To support this view, he quoted one of the department- a "programmatic falsification" of the original Constructivist
store representatives who had been involved with the com- program, perhaps one can consider the conditions of neces-
missioning of the structure. His source stated that Gabo was sary compromise and logistical adjustments that are integral
called because they were sure that "a Constructivist could fill to the process of realizing public works of art.
the space, and yet, 'rejecting solid mass,' not hide the show- Gabo's sculpture was an earnest attempt by the artist to
windows!" Berger believed Gabo's work was essentially a create a public monumental statement about his version of
84
gimmick to aid the department store in its capitalist Constructivism in the postwar years. This work did, in fact,
mission-to sell clothes.39 resuscitate his career; it put Gabo on the postwar map of the
Given his implicit and explicit harsh criticisms
art of
world and was featured almost immediately in surveys of
European art.45 An article in Time magazine written just
Gabo's abstract proposal for the Monument to the Unknown
after the sculpture was dedicated asserted: "It is the most
Political Prisoner, it is not surprising that Berger denigrated
ambitious
the Bijenkorf construction. He believed that art should be and successful combination of modern sculpture
recognizable (i.e., figurative) because in that way we and
can architecture yet attempted."46
While Berger obviously disagreed with this acclama-
relate the artist's way of looking to our own. Berger further
insisted that valid art required political commitmenttion
andover Gabo's monument, he fervently admired Zadkine's
Destroyed City, calling it not only "the artistic tour de force"
should be tied preferably to a particular and local circum-
stance. 40 The universal claims of abstraction were anathema
of his career, but also "the best modern war monument in
to him. Europe" because "it does not try to turn defeat into victory,
nor does it hide the truth by invoking Honour."47 Zadkine's
Berger's essay on Gabo, which leads off a section titled
work was public in the "true" sense in that it was about a
"Artists Defeated by the Difficulties" in his collected essays
Permanent Red, stated: "The tragedy is that Gabosingle
. . . subject, a shared catastrophic event, that was recog-
decided to become an emigre. ... Like many emigres, nized
Gabo and understood by all. Ultimately this statue has
endured
probably tended to cling to the ideas he brought with him, as as a landmark for Rotterdam, an eternal reminder of
though they were part of his homeland. He withdrew the horror and a testimony to the citizens' ability to rebuild
into
himself and began to shield his theories with a static form ofthe ashes of war. 48 It has maintained its vigorous sense
from
of horror and survival. With the passage of time the work
idealism.'4' Buchloh, however, saw the problem from a differ-
ent perspective. He interpreted Gabo's development retains
as a its stature among postwar European urban
memorials.
progressive withdrawal from the original Constructivist
premises. He incisively documented Gabo's attempt to shoreThe Gabo was in a public place, yet the meaning and
purpose of this abstract structure was never obvious. It was a
up his own historical position in the 1950s, often by misrep-
resenting the movement as a whole and usually for hiscommercial
own rather than a civic commission, an expedient
glorification.42 solution to a planning problem. The decision to commission
For Buchloh, the Bijenkorf construction epitomized the artist involved only a handful of people and was not open
to wider debate. This work was imposed on the city by the
Gabo's postwar failing; it was the culmination of a distorted
Constructivist fantasy that was increasingly distanced town
fromplanners.
its radical origins. He focused especially on the construc- The differences between Zadkine's and Gabo's sculp-
turesitextend beyond a simple matter of style, to the very
tion's bronze material, the wire-mesh fill, and the fact that
was raised on a base. He wrote that Gabo's use of bronze was different way in which each work was commissioned and,
a betrayal that "categorically rejects all earlier claims asso- ultimately, to the distinct place-both physically and
ciated with the new materiality of Constructivist sculpture, as ideologically-that each work has within the urban
environment.
defined in the Realistic Manifesto."43 But Buchloh was mis-

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 The transition from The Destroyed City to the Bijenkorf 23. For a detailed discussion of the chronology of Gabo's Bijenkorf models, see
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art: Other than
construction was a passage from a time when public sculp- Works by British Artists (London: Tate Gallery with Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981), cat.
no. T.218-2192.
ture was assumed to be a recognizable image about a cultur-
24. Gabo to Read, November 19, 1954 (Beinecke). See also Nash, "Sculpture of
ally shared event to a new era when monumentally scaled Purity and Possibility," in Nash and Merkert, Naum Gabo, 42 and cat. no. 66, and
sculptures in public places were not necessarily monuments Gabo's written statements about the Bijenkorf commission, n.d. (Beinecke).
25. Gabo to Read, November 19, 1954 (Beinecke).
in the traditional sense at all.49 Moreover, these works high-
26. Read to Gabo, March 27, 1953 (Beinecke).
light the challenges inherent in a public role for modern art, 27. Nash, "Sculpture of Purity and Possibility," in Nash and Merkert, Naum Gabo,
42.
particularly the difficulties of reconciling a public need to
28. Gabo to Read, January 10, 1956, Herbert Read archive, University of British
commemorate important historical events in a manner that is Columbia, quoted in Sanderson and Lodder, "Catalogue Raisonn6," in Nash and
Merkert, Naum Gabo, cat. no. 67.
meaningful with the abstract nature of much art produced
29. Katherine Kuh, The Artist's Voice: Talks with 17 Artists (New York: Harper and
since the end of World War II. The issues and tensions that
Row, 1962), 100.
permeate contemporary debates about public sculpture have 30. John Berger, "Naum Gabo," in Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing (1960; London:
Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1979), 58. See also Mumford, "The
much in common with postwar Rotterdam. Cave, the City and the Flower," 49; and David Thompson, "Outlines for a Public Art,"
Studio International 171 (April 1966): 136.
31. "Successful Beehive," 74.
32. See Gabo's typed statement, n.d. (Beinecke). This statement was translated into
Notes
Italian and published as part of an article by Naum Gabo, Nina Franchina, and Ugo
The author extends special thanks to Pepe Karmel and John Scott for their valuable Sissa, "Due monumenti a Rotterdam e a Taranto," Civilitd delle macchine (Rome) 4
editorial suggestions and to Linda Kenepaske for her assistance with the Zadkine
(May-June 1956): 24, 101-2.
research.
33. See Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
1. See "Rotterdam's Beehive," Architectural Forum 107 (September 1957): 133.
sity Press, 1983), 205-6.
2. Israel Shenker, "A New City Emerging in Rotterdam," New York Times, August 15,
85
34. The term "vitalism" was first applied to an analysis of modem sculpture by Jack
1954, sec. 2, p. 27.
Burnham in Beyond Modern Sculpture (New York: Braziller, 1968), chap. 2, "The
3. Quoted in Ionel Jianoul, Zadkine (Paris: Arted Editions d'Art, 1964), 48.
Biotic Sources of Modem Sculpture." According to Burnham's definition, Gabo's art
4. Ossip Zadkine, Le Maillet et le Ciseau: Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris: Editions Ablin
appears to incorporate aspects of both vitalism and organicism.
Michel, 1968), 187-88.
35. Nash, "Sculpture of Purity and Possibility," in Nash and Merkert, Naum Gabo,
5. La Sculpture Francaise de Rodin 6 nosjours (Berlin: Zeughaus), cited in Jianoul, 42.
Zadkine, 66.
36. Berger, "Naum Gabo," in Permanent Red, 58-64; and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh,
6. See Johannes Langner's monograph on the Destroyed City, Zadkine: Mahnmalfiir "Cold War Constructivism," in Serge Guilbaut, ed., Reconstructing Modernism: Art in
Rotterdam (Stuttgart: Philip Reklam, 1963), 6.
New York, Paris, and Montreal 1945-1969 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990),
7. See Zadkine, Maillet et le Ciseau, 190, and Lewis Mumford, "The Cave, the City 85-110.
and the Flower" (1957), in The Highway and the City (New York: Harcourt Brace
37. See Read, "Naum Gabo," in The Tenth Muse: Essays in Criticism (London:
Jovanovich, 1963), 45. In Langner, Zadkine: Mahnmalfiir Rotterdam, 8, the patron
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 57-58. Read, an internationally influential
was not identified.
curator and critic, worked in the early 1950s as director of the Institute of Contempo-
8. Marita Hendriks, public relations officer of the Bijenkorf, telephone interview with
rary Arts in London, the sponsor of the Unknown Political Prisoner competition.
the author, April 28 and May 2, 1994. Apparently, the Bijenkorf publicly acknowl-
Stephen Polcari has discussed Read's influence on the American Abstract Expres-
edged that it was Zadkine's patron only twenty-five years later. Dr. van de Wal was
sionist artists in Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience (New York:
director of the Bijenkorf from 1941 until 1957. He was asked by the owners to be
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
director during World War II. He was the store's first non-Jewish director. There are 38. Read, "Naum Gabo," 57-58.
many questions yet unanswered regarding the commission process and the patrons.
39. Berger, "Naum Gabo," in Permanent Red, 58, 61, and 62.
While we can assume that van de Wal and the Bijenkorf owners knew that Zadkine
40. Berger, "Introduction," in Permanent Red, 15.
was a Jewish survivor, why did the Bijenkorf patrons choose to remain anonymous?
41. Berger, "Naum Gabo," in Permanent Red, 63.
Was this due to the fact that they were Jewish, too? Were they concerned about
42. Buchloh, "Cold War Constructivism."
community reaction? Or did they simply prefer to deflect attention away from them-
43. Ibid., 95.
selves as individual entrepreneurs to the city?
44. Gabo to Read, January 4, 1953 (Beinecke).
9. See Langner, Zadkine: Mahnmalfiir Rotterdam, 18-19.
45. See, for example, Carola Giedion-Welcker, Contemporary Sculpture: An Evolution
10. Ibid., "Aus der Diskussion um dat Rotterdamer Mahnmal 1950," 25-28, in-
in Volume and Space (New York: Wittenborn, 1960), 184-85; Eduard Trier, Form and
cludes excerpts from articles published by various authors in De Maasstad, Katholiek
Space (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961), 212-13; and Robert Maillard, A Dictio-
Bouwblad, Kunst en Kunstleven, and Het Rotterdamsch Parool.
nary of Modern Sculpture (London: Methuen, 1962), 103.
11. Het Rotterdamsch Parool, February 2, 1950, cited in Langner, Zadkine: Mahn-
46. "Successful Beehive," 74.
malfiir Rotterdam, 26-27.
47. Berger, "Zadkine," in Permanent Red, 117.
12. Marita Hendriks, interview, May 2, 1994.
48. The Zadkine statue is frequently mentioned in guidebooks today. See, for
13. Langner, Zadkine: Mahnmal fir Rotterdam, 8.
example, H. Constance Hill, Fielding Travel Guides: Holland1994, 232; Baedecker's
14. "Rotterdam Statue Marks War Blow," New York Times, May 16, 1953, sec. 1, p. 5.
Netherlands (1992), 33-34; and Michelin Green Guide to the Netherlands, n.d., 160.
15. Mumford, "A Walk through Rotterdam," in The Highway and the City, 32-33.
49. Harriet Senie was the first to distinguish between public art and art in public
16. This structure was an important landmark in department-store design. See
spaces. See her "Studies in the Development of Urban Sculpture, 1950-1975,"
Marcel Breuer, with captions and introduction by Cranston Jones, Marcel Breuer:
(Ph.D. diss., New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, 1981). The difficulties of
Buildings and Projects 1921-1961 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1963), 178-189.
reconciling abstract work by contemporary artists with monuments intended to
17. The project was first discussed with Gabo in London, June 2, 1954. See Colin
commemorate traumatic historical events is intelligently analyzed in the introduction
Sanderson and Christina Lodder, "Catalogue Raisonne of the Constructions and
to James E. Young, The Texture ofMemory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New
Sculptures," in Steven A. Nash and Jirn Merkert, eds., Naum Gabo: Sixty Years ofHaven: Yale University Press, 1993), esp. 8-11.
Constructivism, exh. cat. (London: Tate Gallery, 1987), 243, cat. no. 66.
18. "Successful Beehive," Time, June 3, 1957, 74. Van de Wal, clearly a central
figure in the postwar rebuilding of Rotterdam, is a subject worthy of further research.
19. Gabo wrote many letters to Herbert Read in the early 1950s complaining that he
felt ignored by contemporary artists, critics, and museums. See Gabo's papers,
album, box 41, Beinecke Library, Yale University; hereafter identified as "Beinecke."
20. Nash, "Sculpture of Purity and Possibility," in Nash and Merkert, Naum Gabo,
41.
JOAN PAC H NER received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine
21. Read to Gabo, March 19, 1953 (Beinecke).
22. John Berger, "The Unknown Political Prisoner," New Statesman and Nation, Arts, New York University. She is an independent scholar in
March 21, 1953, 338. New York City specializing in postwar sculpture.

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