Two figures on a horse (1965) Cor Dam
Artist Cor Dam has created a number of special monumental works of art, in which he combined two and three dimensionality, such as ceramic tableaux and brick reliefs. Dam was a talented sculptor. You can also see his gift for compositional variation in this earlier, free-standing sculpture Two figures on a horse from 1965. It is an image that is interesting from several sides and where the idea of riders on horseback is stylized in an unusual way. The skin is covered with a pattern of notches. The statue originally stood in the sandbox of the De Wielewaal primary school. The statue has wandered for a few years, after which it was eventually placed temporarily at the entrance of the Municipal Wharf on Frans Halsstraat. Spring 2020 is Two figures on a horse relocated on the corner of Molenweg and Koninginnelaan.
Cor Dam (Delft, 1935 – Delft, 2019) was educated at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, decorative department. He then studied sculpture at the architecture department of the Delft University of Technology, under extraordinary professor (and sculptor) Oswald Wenckebach. Dam was not only a sculptor, but also a painter, draftsman and monumental artist. After his studies he worked from 1950 to 1969 as a ceramist and designer at De Porceleyne Fles in Delft. He made almost non-figurative designs, many wavy lines, initially organic in which he said he still recognized human figures. He already made grand gestures back then, which later becomes even more apparent in both monumental work and late free objects. In 2004 Dam has another exhibition in a gallery in Woudrichem with images that move between figuration and abstraction and are built up of large robust forms. In bronze, wood and ceramics, his sculptures are about color, structure, skin and matter with some main shapes such as triangles, rectangles and lines. He has also worked as a painter and draftsman and has been a teacher at TU Delft since 1988.