Ode to Dieuwke Abma-ter Horst | Soulful Sculptures

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The monthly evening meeting of Soroptimist club Amsterdam Centrum/West: among our club members with the most diverse professions, ages and spheres of life, our Dieuwke Abma-ter Horst. A tall lady, as always dressed in wide-fitting robes in warm earth colors. Around the shoulders a batik shawl. Silver-gray, loosely raised hair, which had escaped, hugging her bespectacled face. Leaning lightly on her wooden walking stick, how often later, when we had become friends, I groped the handle that stone dragon head with sparkling presumably glass eyes...

That first meeting I also immediately noticed her controlled, warm voice - an alto - and her accent - 'Tukkers', in her own words. She had been born and raised in Rijssen in 1926, and the correct spelling of her first name she told me only later.

During the introduction round, I discovered some visual professions. Dieuwke - sculptor - was also a weaver, enthusiastic about classical to contemporary music and several cultures. We turned out to share even more interests.

Sitting in her flowery, narrow, long garden with natural stone walkway, and yes there were plastics here and there by her hand, animal figures, busts on carefully chosen pedestals, portraits cast in bronze; I enjoyed the silence, only bird sounds, sometimes rustling leaves. And that in the middle of the city, behind the stately house on Prinsengracht. Her husband Jelle, prominent architect, the three children already independent, now her artistry had come to full bloom. Her 1980 portrait of writer Simon Carmiggelt had been stolen from the Amsterdam Schouwburg during the Boekenbal, only to be found years later in Belgium.

Stealthily I peered through the windows of the garden house, her studio, until Dieuwke arrived with the coffee, brewed in a traditional Turkish copper jug. My curiosity had not gone unnoticed, however, Dieuwke invited me to discuss her studies in wax or clay, about which she was not yet completely satisfied. By adding and removing, the form emerged, for portraits, but then again not too emphatically, likeness - capturing light and shadow play. This pure craft had to become animated, spread wings, before the bronze caster did his work on it. The casts also had to be carefully freed from the channels, possibly patinated. 

In a side room, Dieuwke showed me folders of prints, sketchbooks and a textile collection from Indonesia: despite her love of Amsterdam and her neighborhood, this country, this music, smells and colors was one with her inner self...