منحوتات

Direct carving in white Carrara marble and lost-wax casting in bronze: the second half of Mon De Rijck's work unfolds in these two materials. The formal vocabulary is consistent: full, closed volumes, softened edges, a serpentine line coiling the body upon itself, an alternation of mirror-polished surfaces and areas left rough or hammered, where the mark of the tool remains legible. The human figure, almost always female, is reduced to essentials: a curve, an upward movement, a withdrawal.

To work this white marble, Mon De Rijck spent some ten years in Italy, in the small village of Ortonovo, a few kilometres from the Carrara quarries. This immersion allowed him to follow the stone from the raw block to the finished work.

The commission for "De Liefdesborre" ("The fountain of love") originated in a bequest: in 1943 the merchant François De Roy died childless and left 150,000 francs to the municipality of Schaerbeek for the erection of a monument depicting the legend of the fountain of love. It was not until 1986 that the municipality launched the competition; meanwhile the sum had been capitalised and reached 900,000 francs. The jury chose Mon De Rijck's project showing the young Herlinde throwing herself into and drowning in the fountain after a heartbreak. The work was inaugurated on 26 May 1988 in Josaphat Park. According to the legend, in the Middle Ages the noblewoman Herlinde loved the knight Théobald; when he had to leave for his knightly duties, she kept returning to the spring until, heartbroken, she threw herself into it. Later the fountain became a favourite meeting place for lovers: drinking its water together, it was said, would unite them within the year. (Sources: archiviris; Patrick Derom, Les sculptures de Bruxelles. Catalogue raisonné, Patrick Derom Gallery, Brussels, 2002, p. 114.)

Major pieces punctuate this path: "Poging tot geestelijke verheffing" ("Attempt at spiritual elevation") in Antwerp, "De Liefdesborre" ("The fountain of love") in Josaphat Park, "de gevleugelde muze" (1993), and the solar sculpture prototype shown in 1986. The monumental works are conceived for public space: low plinth, multiple viewpoints, a dialogue with natural light and, for the fountain, with water.

The family archives hold photographs of his pieces as well as a preparatory sketch; the locations, dates and provenance of several of them remain to be identified. More photographs will join this chapter as they are digitised.

Unfortunately, Carl De Moncharline was unable to find the name corresponding to each sculpture, except for some of them. Because of the poor quality of certain photographs, some required restoration work by his son, who knows his father's work very well, in order to remain as faithful as possible to his work.

A typewritten list from 1989 records 22 of his sculptures, from "En chaque homme sommeille la femme et vice-versa" (1979) to "Offrande" (1988), giving for each the year, the material (bronze, pewter or marble), the dimensions and the price of the time in Belgian francs, broken down into instalments over 60 months: sculpture thus remained affordable, true to a lifelong fight to democratise art.

المصادر: Archives familiales · CV de Mon De Rijck