Willem Pijper |
Artist: Stephan Balkenhol (1957)
Artwork: Homage to Willem Pijper (2025)
Collection: de Doelen
Made possible by: Droom en Daad
Composer Willem Pijper (1894-1947) spent most of his working life in Rotterdam, where he had been the first director of the conservatory since 1930. Thanks to Pijper, the city found a connection with the international modern movement in music. His Third Symphony (1926) has been performed frequently in Europe and the United States and at the opening of Museum Boymans van Beuningen in 1935, his opera Halewijn was performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Pijper foresaw the dangers of Nazi Germany and lost everything he owned in the bombing of 14 May 1940. His music survived because his scores were stored in a safe.
Thanks to the efforts of music historian Arthur van Dijk and with financial support from Droom en Daad, a monument for Willem Pijper could be realized in the foyer of the Doelen. This statue, Hommage aan Willem Pijper, was made by the renowned German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol. He lives and works in Kassel and is a professor at the art academy in Karlsruhe. Balkenhol makes statues, reliefs, silkscreen prints and drawings.
His statues are usually made from poplar wood. Balkenhol has a unique, monumental style. He knows how to combine abstraction and figuration into powerful representations. Because the statue and pedestal are made of the same material, they form a single whole. He previously made statues of cultural figures such as Rembrandt, Richard Wagner and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In May 2023, Balkenhol visited Rotterdam where he was introduced to the music of Willem Pijper and the Doelen. His works are part of the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Museum Voorlinden and the Erasmus MC, as well as international museums such as the MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2025, the Kunsthal devoted a retrospective to his oeuvre.
