Dutch

Art and Industry

Art and Industry, an industrialist's view of art

Werkspoor's Board of Directors consistently showed a keen interest in the visual arts. Specifically, attention was paid to the aesthetic styling of products, by designers such as Elsebeth van Bierkom, Ineke Boks, Gerard Hordijk and Willem Rietveld. The front of the engine section and back of the guard's van of the Dutch Swiss Trans-Europe Express (1957) and the interior of carriages for export to Argentina bear witness to this. 

In the 1930s M.R. Damme, the company's managing director, commissioned various artists to depict Werkspoor's activities. Many of the resulting paintings were reproduced in Werkspoor calendars.
Commissions to graphic artists also point to a rapprochement between art and industry. Werkspoor is an early example of Dutch industrial patronage of the arts.  

 

Among those commissioned was the poster designer Wim ten Broek, who in 1939 produces a series of splendid gouaches for calendar pages (printed on this page). After 1945 commissions were given to Lex Horn, Maaike Braat, Johan Sjollema, Theo Kurpershoek, Gerard Hordijk and the sculptors Leo Braat and Henri Wezelaar.