Alderman Arwen van Gestel received the message on Friday morning that the bronze artwork ‘The woman’ has been stolen from the center of Roosendaal. He is very sick of it: “You stay away from it!” Yet this does not stand alone. Bronze theft seems to be on the rise with a number of special examples in our province.
‘The woman’
So on Thursday night it was a hit in Roosendaal. The sculpture ‘The woman’ was made in 1977, the Year of the Woman. The statue stood in several places, most recently at the Dr. Braber Street.
“I am extremely disappointed that people cannot keep their hands off our stuff,” alderman Van Gestel responds. “Art in public space is for everyone, that makes it invaluable and you stay away from it. We are doing everything we can to get it back.” A report has now been filed with the police.
The sow
Visitors to the provincial government building in Den Bosch must have been surprised last October when the huge bronze sow suddenly missed. And it didn’t stop there: most of her piglets had also disappeared. Only three little pigs were still in place.
That was not the first time that Zeug Met Biggen, as the artwork from 1979 is called, was the victim of thieves. “Years ago, some piglets were stolen,” said a spokesman for the province. “That turned out to be a kind of carnivalesque action and we got those pieces back neatly.” But in 2019 it happened again. “We never saw those piglets again.”
Tomb figurines
Where it was once a carnivalesque action at the provincial house, there was very little to laugh about at the Roman Catholic cemetery Broekhoven in Tilburg last May. Bronze statuettes were taken from at least fourteen graves, often in a heavy-handed manner.
The stolen images cost between 3,500 and 4,000 euros. But far worse was the grief the thefts caused. For example with Pedro Damen, one of the surviving relatives. “What does this unleash in me? Anger, sadness, frustration. You’re not doing this, are you?”
Fountain
Last November, emotions also ran high in Hilvarenbeek. There, a heavy fountain with dolphins was just removed from a backyard, while the owner was sleeping a little further away. To him, the statue was worth much more than the thousands of euros on the price tag.
“He bought it for my mother-in-law, who later died of cancer,” said son-in-law Ron Willemen shortly after the theft. “She really wanted the statue. Every time we looked at that image, we thought of her. That’s why it was so right in the backyard. And now it’s gone.”
Cat Dance and The Last Nun
They also had to believe it in Bergeijk last October. There, at an unguarded moment, two statues were sawn off their plinth. One of them was in the front yard of Jack van Bommel, who was on vacation at the time of the theft.
It was not the return he had hoped for. “It kept me awake. There is quite a bit of emotion behind it, because it was specially made 32 years ago for the purchase of this building. It still has a piece of history.”
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