Image: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Rijksmuseum is showing thirteen monumental sculptures by Carel Visser (1928-2015) in the Rijksmuseum Gardens in Amsterdam. 'Carel Visser in de Rijksmuseumtuinen' runs from 5 June to 25 October 2026 and is free to enter; the museum is open daily from 9am to 5pm at Museumstraat 1.
The museum describes Visser as the most influential Dutch sculptor of the twentieth century and says this is the first time its annual garden exhibition has been devoted to a Dutch artist. The works, some up to eight metres tall or five metres long, are drawn from Dutch museums, private collections and public spaces, and are brought together for the first time.
Visser worked with industrial materials rather than marble, stone or wood, shaping steel plates and iron beams with a cutting torch and welding equipment. The Rijksmuseum traces his early debt to Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti and his shift through geometric abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s towards Minimal Art.
Works identified by the museum include Signal 1 and Signal 2 (1964), commissioned by the Dutch postal and telecommunications service PTT and a fixture of the gardens since 2024 following their recovery and restoration; Jacob's Ladder, from the collection of the City of Utrecht; Lake (2006) from Apeldoorn; Big Four (1954-1965), known in Dutch as 'De Grote Vier', from the collection of the City of Amersfoort; Double Form 4 (1957-1958) from the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo; Two Birds (1954/1994) from the artist's heirs; Auschwitz (1957); and Like a Plant (1988) from Wolters Kluwer Nederland. The sketch model for Flying Fish (1993), made for a commission in Departure Hall 3 at Schiphol Airport, is shown in the museum's atrium.
Big Four has stood in public space beside the Rietveldpaviljoen in Amersfoort, a building designed by Gerrit Rietveld, since the monumental version was donated in 1965 by the Association of Power Machinery. Its loan to Amsterdam was noted in the Rietveldpaviljoen's own newsletter of 19 August 2026, which recommended the Rijksmuseum display as a summer tip.
A free guided tour for blind and partially sighted visitors is scheduled for 4 September. Visser received the Dutch State Prize for Visual Arts and Architecture in 1972 and a lifetime achievement award from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture in 2005, and took part in the Venice Biennale several times.
