Three-Dimensional Sketch for Statue 2002

This self-important woman is Greta Blok, the mother of conceptual artist Cees Krijnen, who dressed her for this occasion in a creation by Frank Govers with shoes by Bruno Magli. He planned to make a life-size sculpture of her in 2003, when she was finally free after a gruelling seventeen-year divorce procedure. The photograph was a sketch design for a monument that should symbolise the opposite of the stigmatised idea of a ‘sad divorcee’. The vicissitudes of his parents’ divorce and his mother’s regained freedom were the subject of Krijnen’s art in the years 1999-2015. It started with the project Financing My Parents’ Divorce, an early form of crowd funding to assist his impoverished mother in the lawsuits that his father repeatedly brought. It garnered him the prestigious Prix de Rome; the prize money went straight to his mother’s fighting fund. In 2003 Cees Krijnen published a one-off glossy entirely magazine entitled G/BLOK, devoted to his mother and muse. It features this amazon-like portrait as a compelling fashion advert.

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