Kees Verschuren

Henricus Petrus Cornelis (Kees) Verschuren (born Breda, 29 August 1941 ) is a Dutch sculptor, painter and former lecturer at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam, known for his monumentalist sculptures in public places in the Netherlands.

In the 1960s he had started as painter and participated in the New Hague School.

After this figurative movement broke up, he quit painting and started focussing on site-specific art.

In the late 1960s Verschuren had started as independent artist in The Hague.

He also worked as art teacher at the Municipal Lyceum in Dordrecht.

This industrial area in the Port of Rotterdam was built on land reclaimed from the North Sea in the 1960s.

In a period of over five years, adjacent to a power plant, the artists developed an area into the largest work of art in the Netherlands in those days.

Born in Princenhage, a neighbourhood in the southwest of the city Breda, Verschuren graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in 1965-66.

He and portrait painter Dick Stapel were the only two students, that finished the full-time program in Visual Arts that year.

Late 1968 they had asked the school director permission to visit the movie Barbarella (film) for their art class.

After initial vague answers, they received an official resignation letter.

In January 1969, with the other two art teachers Lode Pemmelaar and Bep van de Akker, he was fired for holding a survey among their students about their sexual experiences.

The intention of that anonymous survey had been to show the whole school community the usefulness of appointing a sexologist.

The teachers had been popular among their pupils for taking the classes to exhibitions of Robert Rauschenberg, Picasso and Hieronymus Bosch.

This situation was one of the many similar educational incidents in the Netherland in year 1969.

He started as independent artist in The Hague, and came into prominence in the early 1970s as part of new generation of promising artists from The Hague.

After graduation Verschuren also started his career as art teacher at the Municipal Lyceum in Dordrecht.

As artist Verschuren had started as painter in The Hague, realized several landscape/land art projects in the 1970s and 1980s, realized the monumental Artwork "Sjatoodoo" in Rotterdam in 1989, and had a major solo exhibition in the city hall of Delft in 2001.

In the 1970s, in cooperation with Dutch sculptor Teun Jacob (1927-2009), Verschuren created a massive land art project at the first Maasvlakte, entitled Steen in water (Rock in Water).

Later in the 1970s and in the 1980s Verschuren cooperated with the sculptor and environmental artist Lon Pennock in several projects.

In 1973 Verschuren was appointed lecturer at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam in the department of autonomous art, where he taught in concept development.

He is member of the Arti et Amicitiae art society in Amsterdam, and has received scholarships from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in 1974, and from the Mondriaan Fonds in 2003.

Verschuren has four sons.

Since 1975 he has also worked as art consultant for the municipal of Delft and Rotterdam, for the province Overijssel and several individuals.

In 1975 Pennock and Verschuren were commissioned to create an artwork for the new tax office in the city of Helmond.

Furthermore, in 1977 in cooperation with the architect and painter Hubert de Boer (born 1937) and sculptor and architect Coen Wilderom (born 1944), Pennock and Verschuren developed an urban sketch design for the Bezuidenhout, a part of the Haagse Hout district in The Hague.

In this district Pennock, Verschuren and light designer Crista van Santen produced a sculpture made of painted steel and neon, which was realised in 1982s.

In 1983-84 together with Lon Pennock he was recruited to develop a structure plan for art in a recreation area developed in the town of Spaarnwoude, which was implemented.

One of them, Kamiel Verschuren, has followed into his father's footsteps and works as conceptual interdisciplinary artist since 1995.

Another, Oof Verschuren, works as professional advertising and fashion photographer.

And a third son, Zeeger Verschuren, settled as independent filmmaker.

Verschuren is especially known for his monumentalist sculptures in public places in the Netherlands.

"The percentage scheme for art in government buildings was applicable here. A certain percentage of the construction costs were allocated to the purchase of art. Lon Pennock and Kees Verschuren were commissioned to create an artwork. That resulted in four items, two in front, one inside and one behind the building; imaginative rolling pennies made of Weathering steel. The brown rust color is one of the characteristics of this metal alloy. Perhaps that was the reason that the new owner of the artwork in 1996 carried it away as scrap..."

He was also visiting lecturer at the Delft University of Technology and several other art academies in the Netherlands until 2003.

The beeldenmagazine.nl (2015) summarized:

"Verschuren and Jacob discovered their own form of Land Art. They combined ideas of earthwork in nature with the environmental art of the Arnhem school. Besides planting, they processed many industrial materials such as asphalt and concrete in their design. It took no less than five years before the project was completed. This had to do with the size but also with the prevailing participation culture, typical of the seventies. For Jacob and Verschuren it was hard working; on meetings and exhibitions, there was little interest while afterwards they received all kinds of criticism. The land art of Jacob and Verschuren is slowly disappearing with the advent of new plants and the operation of nature."

The environmental artwork was commissioned by the Government of Rotterdam and the local electric power company, who operated the power plant.

In the course of the land art project the land was held in a constant flux of construction, combining "industrial materials with a vegetation structure which had to withstand the North Sea storms."

Among other artists, that participated in the project, were Marinus Boezem and Carel Visser.

The Regional Historical Center Eindhoven (2015) recalled about this project: