Sculpture as free association
Lines and planes of steel float elegantly past one another. Located on a high pedestal, the Draft to the Maritime Monument in Stavanger gives the viewer a whiff of sea and wind, despite its materiality.
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Do we see a bird or two? Or is it waves, breaking against a cliff? A fish that breaks the surface to snatch an insect from the air? The streamlined shape allows your imagination to flow freely. Four straight steel sticks shoot out from the back of the sculpture, they may look like sun rays, or ship masts.
The sculpture is made of steel, and was submitted to the University of Bergen the same year that the larger Maritime Monument in Stavanger was completed. For a long time it stood in the carp pond in the atrium of the HF-building, but it is now set up at the new mingling square between the HF building and the University Library.
Arnold Haukeland (1920-1983) was one of our most important Modernist sculptors. His career took off in 1947 when his draft for the Freedom Monument in Bærum won, in competition with most of Norway's active sculptors. From the beginning of the 1960s Haukeland was a prominent advocate that art should "speak the language of our times". He produced increasingly abstracted sculptures, usually made of steel. Haukeland exhibited at the Biennale in Venice in 1970 and at the Middelheim Biennial in Antwerp in 1979, and was the first sculptor to be Festival Exhibitor in Bergen in 1972. He was appointed Officer of the Order of St. Olav in 1983, and received the Swedish Prince Eugen Medal in 1970.
NORA SØRENSEN VAAGE