Roswitha van der Zander

Publications:

"Roswitha van der Zander
Das plastische Werk"
Verlag Murken-Altrogge
Herzogenrath, 2017
ISBN 978-3-935791-51-9

"Roswitha van der Zander"
catalogue, 25 black and white images with works 1977-1984
author's edition, 1984

"Roswitha van der Zander
Sculptures and Drawings
1981-1994"
published by Murken-Altrogge
Herzogenrath,1994
ISBN 3-921801-74-5

Solo Exibitiones:

Group Exhibitions 1978-2016:

In my sculptural works, as well as in my drawings, real, abstract and surreal elements are included, while the motive mainly prescribes the direction.

For the sculptural work I use the traditional materials of a sculptor, such as clay, plaster and wood. However, I do not follow any art historical tradition, neither formally nor with regard to content.
I have rather questioned this tradition since my first sculptural works, which are portraits of men and women. In these figurative works the emphasis lays on the representation of the nude.
Here my view differs greatly from the representation in the traditional European art, which I see embossed through a single-sided perspective of the male, which I oppose with a new, independent female perspective.
Formally, the relief takes the first place, while I experiment with intermediate forms of relief and full sculpture, as for example in the work “Man in the bath“.

Starting out from figurative sculptures, I have devised two ways of abstraction – one by approaching the body closer and making its details the subject, the other by stepping back and looking at the figure in space.

The first path leads from different parts of the body as an organic form to organic forms in general, the part of my sculptural work showing the greatest analogy with my drawings, since these always have organic objects as basis. To this subject of the organic, including the human body, the art historian Christa Murken refers in the “The erotic dimension of nature – the sculptures and drawings of Roswitha van der Zander”, writing: “From the outset her stylistic peculiarity and strength lay in the sensual sculpturing of human organic and vegetable forms and lines, understanding to elicit from them astonishing interludes with predominantly erotic touches” and “By creating aesthetic analogies between plant and human 'sexual forms', she enriches not only the spectrum of European sculpture, but also the tradition of erotic in art in a surprisingly sovereign way”.

The other path leads from the figure into the room, as in “Nude, climbing the ladder”, over the room with staircases and ladders, to works made up of purely geometric shapes. These architectural abstractions are, on the one hand, reliefs whose basic elements are interlocked forms of rectangle, triangle, stairways and steps, on the other hand, full sculptures, mostly on the basic form of the pyramid, which show complex arrangements of steps and slopes.
The full sculptures in particular offer a variety of different views, depending on the viewing angle and lighting. In the work “Two architectural forms”, the relationship between the two parts and the resulting voidage between them is as a further form element.