Reading girl (1960) Huib Noorlander
Reading girl was a gift from the Rotterdam Booksellers to the municipality, in honor of the twenty-fifth Book Week in 1960. After the Second World War, Rotterdam had quite a number of bookshops, who wanted to give the Boekenweek a local look by offering the statue to the municipality. Until 1969, the sandstone statue by artist Huib Noorlander stood at the entrance of the Korte Lijnbaan. After that, the Schouwburgplein was redesigned and the statue was moved. Years later, when the Schouwburgplein was redesigned by West 8, it could be returned to its original location. The statue belongs to 'the spirit' of the Lijnbaan, as the first car-free shopping street in the Netherlands. The sandstone original of it Reading girl was replaced by a bronze one in the 1970s, after the statue was beheaded.
Huib Noorlander (Schiebroek, 1928 - Nijmegen, 2004) was a figurative sculptor. In 1951 he founded the artist group together with Louis van Roode, Jan Burgerhout, Kees French, Jan Goedhart, Charles Kemper and Ed van Zanden Argus on. On the occasion of the 100 anniversary of the Holland America Line, he made a picture of it Cauldron Twinkle (1973). A replica of this has been in the Maritime Museum Rotterdam since 1998. A reduced version is awarded annually as a Ketelbinkie prize. Various images of Noorlander can be found in Rotterdam. Reading girl en The family were originally made of natural stone, but after being damaged a bronze cast was made of both statues. In the 1960s, Noorlander and artist Joeki Simak formed the most famous artist couple in Rotterdam.