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Couzijn, Wessel
(b Amsterdam, 17 June 1912; d Amsterdam, 16 May 1984). Dutch sculptor. He took sculpture classes at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, and in 1936 won the Prix de Rome with his statue of Orpheus with the Lyre (Amsterdam, Rijksakad. Beeld. Kst.). After periods in Rome and Paris he spent World War II in the USA. On his return, towards the end of 1946, he found the Netherlands devastated, and during the years following the war there was a growing demand for monuments and memorials celebrating the liberation. One such memorial commission led to his Design for a Merchant Marine Monument of 1951, a plaster cast consisting of four irregular-shaped surfaces piled on top of each other and joined together by three vertical ‘masts’. The design was rejected, and the same fate awaited a number of other bronze sculptures for which Couzijn submitted designs. Neither totally abstract nor figurative, these sculptures were eventually thought inappropriate for public monuments. In 1960, however, Couzijn’s work dominated the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale and he was commissioned to make Corporate Entity (bronze, 14*6*8 m, 1960–63). It is made up of three components. Since 1963 it has dominated the space in front of the Unilever Building in Rotterdam.
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