George Belzer

George Belzer (Zaandam, The Netherlands 1937 - June 2014) graduated from the Rotterdam Academy of Visual Arts, where he majored in monumental design. Later, he taught three-dimensional design at the same art academy.

Early in his career as a visual artist, he spent a short period creating paintings of utensils, still lifes, or nudes accompanied by objects. Once he started teaching at a technical school and came into contact with people whose media of choice were wood and metal, he became inspired by these materials. Based on the properties of the materials themselves, he began searching for masculine and feminine shapes. The title of his first exhibition, held around 1960, was ‘Venus Anno 2000’. Here, he exhibited shapes referring to the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus de Milo, feminine shapes in clay, convex and concave, in copper and in ceramic material. His first sculptures developed from a compact mass in which deep cavities were hidden beneath multifaceted polished surfaces. A common theme was using convex and concave shapes, light and dark, and masculine and feminine to form a whole. He worked in copper and aluminium, both of which are highly malleable materials. He then discovered pots, pans and other kitchen utensils. With these ‘raw materials’ he started creating sculptures in which the themes were mankind and the human body. And based on his fascination with life – a process that continues to reproduce itself over and over – he created sculptures relating to cooking and symbols of fertility. As he says himself, ‘A good pot has these three elements – the neck, the belly and the foot – that refer to their functions as well as to experiencing things in physical and spatial terms.’

For over forty years he made large and small sculptures. His work is subtle, non-trendy, probing, and sometimes displaying a touch of humour – characteristics that have never changed. His subject matter, too, remains the same. According to an article in the Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad referring to his debut in July 1964, ‘Belzer draws fresh inspiration from what might be the oldest theme in the art of sculpture: the female body.’ ‘Actually, I don’t work according to any concept like other sculptors do,’ he said during his exhibition ‘Feminine Beelden’[Feminine Sculptures], that was held in Rotterdam in 1988, ‘but now that I look back over the last 25 years, certain themes stand out loud and clear: life and death, and the woman as the symbol of fertility and life.’ And to help viewers understand his work, he says: ‘The titles of my sculptures give you a hint about the light-hearted and sometimes humorous aspects of my sculptures.”

After a visit to Het Depot, he wrote that it made him ‘dream about turning the kitchen into a ‘Fertile kitchen’ for a while".