ELISABETH BARMARIN - LE ROI BAUDOUIN

SOME CULTURE...

Patinated bronze low-relief (1998)

Elisabeth Barmarin has portrayed the late King Baudouin, standing in such a way that it seems he is walking into the metro station. The 1m20 wide and 2m25 high sculpture is in a realist style, in which austerity and simplicity set the tone. In the workshop, Elisabeth Barmarin kept the high relief of the dried earth, which portrays King Baudouin. The earth is worn and cracked. The pain and loss are locked in and thus confirmed. When the work of art was created, the soft earth was replaced by bronze, a more solid material, as a symbol of the memory of the people. It was a very emotional experience for the artist to create a sculpture – for a public place – about a person (and also, ultimately, about their presence/ absence) whose disappearance plunged the whole country into mourning. Other than the King, the artist also engraved several silhouettes representing the many people who loved their King. Elisabeth Barmarin happily quotes the reaction she had from a STIB official: “It looks as if the King is between heaven and earth”.