Carel Visser in the Rijksmuseum Gardens
5 June to 25 October 2026
Publication date: 14 April 2026 - 14:40
This summer’s retrospective exhibition of the sculptor Carel Visser in the Rijksmuseum Gardens features 13 monumental works. It marks the first time the Rijksmuseum’s annual garden exhibition is dedicated to a Dutch artist. The most influential Dutch sculptor of the 20th century, Visser worked with industrial materials such as iron, steel and concrete. The sculptures on display, some of them up to eight metres tall or five metres long, come from various Dutch museums, private collections and public spaces. The exhibition will be open to everyone free of charge from 5 June to 25 October 2026.
While other international artists of his generation often worked in pure abstraction, Carel Visser’s minimalist sculptures almost always draw on forms derived from nature. The works in this exhibition are a splendid complement to Signal 1 and 2, which has already been on display in the Rijksmuseum Gardens for over a year and a half.
Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum
Cutting torch
Carel Visser had no interest in traditional sculpture in bronze, marble or wood – he preferred working with steel plates and iron structural elements, using a cutting torch and a welding machine. In his early work, Visser initially built on the pioneering efforts of artists such as Constantin Brâncuși and Alberto Giacometti, but over time his work developed a distinct personal signature through a gradual increase in the abstraction of natural forms. Through his geometric abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s, the artist increasingly aligned himself with Minimal Art and related movements.
Reflections
The sculptor made extensive use of reflection in his work – not only in Signal 1 and 2, but also in other works in the outdoor exhibition, such as Double Form 4 (1957–1958) from the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo; Two Birds (1954/1994) from the collection of the heirs of Carel Visser; and Big Four (1965) from the city of Amersfoort.
Public space
Works by Carel Visser were installed in many post-war developments in the 1960s, in Amsterdam, The Hague, Hengelo, Groningen, Emmeloord, Stadskanaal, Zeewolde and elsewhere. The exhibition presents three such works that Carel Visser created for public space, namely Jacob's Ladder, Lake and Big Four. They have rarely if ever been moved from their original locations and are being shown together for the first time.
Jacob's ladder
Standing eight metres tall, Jacob's Ladder (1954) is the tallest sculpture Carel Visser ever produced. Consisting of eight identical black-lacquered steel crescents stacked in a stepped formation, it was created for the post-war reconstruction exhibition E55. In 1975, it was installed on Robert Koch Square in Utrecht.
Lake
From Apeldoorn comes the work Lake (2006), an enlargement of Lake Powell, which the artist made in 1998, basing it on the shape of this reservoir in the Colorado River in the United States. Lake was installed in Sprengen Park in Apeldoorn to mark the award to the artist of the 2004 Wilhelminaring for his entire body of work.
Big four
Big Four (1954) originates from Amersfoort. A small version of this scupture was shown at the 1962 exhibition of work by Carel Visser and painter Joost van Rooijen in De Zonnehof, a pavilion in the city that was designed by Gerrit Rietveld. The monumental version was donated in 1965 by the Association of Power Machinery (VvK), and this landmark work has stood in the public space next to the pavilion ever since.
Flying fish
The sketch model of Flying Fish (1993) will be on view in the atrium of the Rijksmuseum. Carel Visser created this three-metre-long version as part of a commission for a monumental sculpture in Schiphol Airport’s Departure Hall 3. Visser used steel cables to suspend the work, which consists of steel plates in various colours, above the heads of travellers.
Awards
Carel Visser received numerous awards, including the 1972 Dutch State Prize for Visual Arts and Architecture and the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB). He participated several times in the Venice Biennale, as well as in exhibitions in New York, London, Paris and Düsseldorf. Visser also held a visiting teaching position in Washington. His work is included in the collection of Tate Modern in London, and in all Dutch museums of modern art. His work can also be found in public spaces in Germany, France and Denmark.
Carel Visser in the Rijksmuseum Gardens is made possible in part by the Don Quixote Foundation/Rijksmuseum Fonds, Pon and the Rijksmuseum Club.
