In this essay, French critic and curator Bertrand Lorquin analyzes the work of sculptor Cornelis Zitman. He discusses the range of influences on Zitman’s production, from classical Greek and Renaissance artists to Giacometti, Picasso, and Maillol, as well as folk art, primitive art, African art, and tribal art. Though Zitman was not from Latin America (Dutch residing in Venezuela), Lorquin believes that his work is representative of Latin American culture. Lorquin asserts that Zitman’s figurative sculptures respond to a need for human representation in modern art. He sheds light on what drives Zitman to sculpt, mainly the desire to materialize his thinking, to perceive the most intimate facet of the human being, and to express the signs and symbols of human society.

This essay by French historian, critic, and curator Bertrand Lorquin on the work of Cornelis Zitman (1926?2016) was published in the catalogue to the exhibition Cornelis Zitman: Esculturas y dibujos held at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá in late 1988. The works featured in the show, which had represented Venezuela at the 19th São Paulo Biennial (1987), had been on exhibit at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in May and June of 1988. This essay by Lorquin, along with María Elena Ramos’s “Cuerpos para un espacio en América,” was first published in the catalogue to the event in São Paulo (Cornelis Zitman. Venezuela, Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, 1987). This exhibition was the first solo show of the Dutch-born Venezuelan artist ever held in Colombia and Lorquin’s text introduces the Colombian public to his work in sculpture and in drawing. The French critic is the son of Dina Vierny, a well-known Russian-French gallerist and one of Zitman’s greatest supporters in the early seventies. The exhibitions of Zitman’s work held at Vierny’s gallery earned the artist international recognition. Zitman’s sculpture, then, is quite familiar to Lorquin. Indeed, Lorquin has written a number of texts on the artist, the last and longest of which is “Construir una Vida/Crear una Obra,” published in 2006 on the occasion of the exhibition at the Museum Beelden aan Zee, or the Sculptures by the Sea Museum, in the Netherlands (see the publication Cornelis Zitman: onze man in Caracas - our man in Caracas, Zwolle: Museum Beelden aan Zee, 2006).