Tribute to André van der Louw (2015) Herman Lamers

photo Ernst Moritz
About the artwork

André van der Louw (1933 - 2005) was a Dutch politician and director, who became mayor of Rotterdam in 1974; he stayed that until 1981. Van der Louw was an accessible and beloved mayor and many people remember him. The initiative for the program around it Tribute to André van der Louw was taken by the André van der Louw Honorary Foundation (Hans Kombrink, Jacqueline de Jong, Jan Cees van Duin, Nico van Eck, Koos van der Steenhoven) and the municipality of Rotterdam. The foundation worked closely with BKOR. They asked visual artist Herman Lamers for this assignment, because his work often focuses on the context and location of an assignment. Lamers' work ranges from figurative to abstract spatial, and abstraction, realism and poetry often go together in both form and material choice. On Saturday, November 21, 2015, the day on which André van der Louw was installed as mayor of Rotterdam in 1974, the statue was unveiled in the Timmerhuis, as a tribute to the former mayor. A street sign was also unveiled and a symposium was held in the Citizens' Hall of the town hall.

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About the artist

Herman Cornelis Lamers (Bussum, 1954) is a Rotterdam sculptor, installation artist, photographer and draftsman. He studied from 1975 to 1980 at the Minerva Academy in Groningen. He always works in a spatial, sometimes abstract but more often in a figurative visual language, always dependent on and in relation to the environment. His work can be seen in galleries and exhibition spaces and he has various commissions in public space, including a number in Rotterdam.

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