Ontwerp voor een penning (?) van gips 1876 - 1947

This plaster piece, presumably a design for a medal, was made by Lambertus Zijl. The design has a chunky feel. You can imagine Zijl pushing and prodding the wet plaster to build this image of a woman holding a child. It’s as though he’s wrestling the material into shape. I wonder if Zijl was thinking about the relationship between the figure and the ground, how they push against each other. Or how to build a cohesive composition, how to bring the work into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. The marks have a real directness, reminding me of Medardo Rosso’s wax sculptures. There’s an intimacy to the way the woman holds the child, which I think comes through the physical process of making. Artists are always having this conversation, across time and space, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting, sculpting, it’s all embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty. There are multiple interpretations here, and that’s okay.