Over Nel van Lith

After visiting a sculpting studio with her mother at the age of fourteen and smelling the smell of wet clay, Van Lith decided to become a sculptor. She studied at the Rijksakademie where she was taught by Piet Esser. Nel van Lith became a widow at an early age and was left to fend for herself with five children. A difficult task; she could only sculpt when the children were at school and at intervals. Nevertheless, she succeeded in creating a whole oeuvre of abstract and figurative sculptures in stone and bronze for public spaces. Ordinary life and everything that goes with it formed her source of inspiration. Just like life itself, her sculptures are always different depending on the point of view from which you look at them. ‘At first I made all the shapes round. At a certain point I thought life is hard and sharp, I am not going to round it off anymore.’ Her work cannot be anything other than personal expression; it has to come out. Just as a volcano erupts part of the earth’s interior, the sculptor is an outlet for the interior of people, she later stated. According to Van Lith, the sculpture The Sculptor symbolises her life: ‘Making moulds in the shower at night when the children were in bed.’ It can hardly be anything other than a self-portrait.