Willy Meysmans (1930-2024) - Grijp het leven

"Seize Life"
Artist: Willy Meysmans
Copper engraving on velin
1978
Edition 12/40
31 x 24.5 cm
Very good condition
For sale from own art collection
See description on Wikipedia
Shipped in a cardboard tube

Willy Meysmans (Mechelen, March 10, 1930 – Leuven, December 21, 2024) was a Belgian sculptor who, among other works, created the statue Fiere Margriet in Leuven in 1981.
Life and work
Meysmans studied at the Academy in Mechelen. He learned from, among others, Olivier Strebelle how to work with ceramics at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp.

In the 1960s he lived in Carrara, Italy, where he created abstract sculptures. Afterwards he taught from 1964 to 1995 at the Academy in Leuven, where from around 1970 he began clay modeling and making bronze statues using the lost-wax method.[6] Meysmans exhibited at several exhibitions in Belgium[7] and abroad (Western Europe and Africa).

Expo ’58
In 1958 he created a monumental ceramic work for the Belgian pavilion of the world exposition in Brussels. He also produced several more ceramic works for private and public buildings.

Fiere Margriet
In 1982 the Leuven Merchants’ Association donated a statue of Margaretha of Leuven to the city of Leuven. Meysmans was commissioned to create the statue of the Fiere Margriet based on legends. He depicted her as a naked woman floating on the water, carried by fish. The statue itself weighs more than 200 kilograms and was displayed at the intersection of Tiensestraat and Muntstraat in an elevated fountain. In 2000 the city received an unexpected bill for placing photographs of this statue on their website, due to a lack of panorama freedom in Belgium.

Fiere Margriet remained at that location for thirty years before a new location was sought. After about a year in the city’s storehouse, since August 2013 it lies on the terraces on the left bank of the Dijle along Dirk Boutslaan. The Leuven city council initially wanted to place the statue in the Dijle, but did not obtain permission from the Flemish Environment Agency. Possibly, upon completion of the Hertogensite, a second move to that park on the Dijle banks would follow.