Herbert Nouwens - Belvédère Suite

In the summer of 2024 the Dutch sculptor Herbert Nouwens (1954) will show nine monumental sculptures in the Museum park of Museum Belvédère, under the name of Belvédère Suite, in analogy with the musical term. Six sculptures were selected from different periods of Nouwens’ sizeable oeuvre and three were made especially for this exhibition. In addition the west wing of the museum shows a chamber presentation with smaller work he made.

Themes like ‘movement and tranquility, ‘mortality’ and ‘life and death’ are central in Nouwens’ oeuvre. The constructive and destructive forces in our world inspired him to make his new sculptures for Belvédère Suite.

The title of the exhibition refers to the multi-part dance compositions of the Baroque, in which different dances were ordered to contrast with each other. Because the different parts of a suite are in the same key they still form a unity.

In the selection and arrangement of the nine sculpures in the Museum park the artist aims at a similar interplay between the sculptures themselves, and with the rigid symmetrical design of the park landscape.

Nouwens is known for his often large and capricious structures of used materials – mainly steel – that show traces of an earlier life.