"I represent the human being, regardless of where he’s from, who he is or what he does. I believe some feelings are universal to mankind and wish to express these.”
Hanneke Beaumont (1947, NL) is a Dutch sculptor who explicitly chooses the art of modeling.
Initially, her oeuvre is defined by terracotta sculptures of life-size human figures in various poses; loners, but also couples or small groups. Layer by layer, she allows her characters to emerge by building them out of clay without using a skeleton. This time-consuming process remains part of the final result; her shaping hands are visible as a visual element in the texture of the sculpture.
Over the course of her artistic career, Beaumont has also come to choose bronze and cast iron as final materials in which the patina of the bronze and also the color and texture of the oxidized cast iron play an important visual role in her work. The casting of these sculptures is an important part of the process. For this reason, the sculptor regularly alternates her stay in the Netherlands with Pietrasanta, Italy, where the best mold makers can be found.
Beaumont's human figures are androgynous and show no specific personal traits; they are not portraits. They emerge from the artist's imagination and their postures and facial features are generic. They often exude an atmosphere of human fragility and anticipation prior to a decision. And sometimes a surprising decisiveness appears in a pose. Not the private but rather the universal of human beings Hanneke Beaumont wants to express.
Hanneke Beaumont was born in Maastricht in 1947, she lives and works in Middelburg.