In the yard of Bas van Leeuwen (Berkel en Rodenrijs, 1944), there stands a large sculpture made of polished and brushed stainless steel, titled Diaphragm. Like the pupil of an eye, the opening of the circular object captures the light, revealing the landscape behind it and bringing it into view. That landscape—surrounded by the urban sprawl of Rotterdam and its surroundings—is the Schieveen Polder nature reserve, through which the Berkelsche Zweth river flows. This is the birthplace of sculptor Bas van Leeuwen, who was born and raised here before setting out to explore the world.

Bas van Leeuwen grew up in a family with an older and a younger brother. The Van Leeuwen family was involved in transportation and ran a bus and taxi company just after World War II. From this background, he inherited an independent and free-spirited mindset. He was sent to the Montessori school in Schiebroek, four kilometers away, where he thrived under the school’s motto: Help me to do it myself. That principle has stayed with him throughout his life, especially when he later made art education an inseparable part of his artistic practice.

The rigid secondary school (MULO) in Hillegersberg that followed was a disappointment. He preferred building and tinkering with discarded materials.

“It started when central heating was installed in our house. The installer left behind all kinds of scrap material, and I used it to build my own contraptions. They didn’t serve any practical purpose, but for me they functioned as visual signs to which I could assign meaning—a kind of spatial grip on life and the world around me. One of our neighbors was the writer Annie M.G. Schmidt, and she saw something in what I was doing. She encouraged me to continue and played a role in my decision to apply to art school.
I wasn’t allowed to take final exams at the MULO. The only subjects I occasionally passed were crafts, descriptive geometry, and social studies. I could have taken state exams, but instead, in early 1963, I took a job on the Holland America Line and sailed as a pantry steward on the SS Maasdam to New York. From there, I sent a postcard of the Statue of Liberty to the entire class wishing them good luck with their exams.”

His second trip with the Holland America Line ended abruptly. The SS Maasdam was set to sail to Bremen for the first time but struck a wreck at the mouth of the Elbe River and began to list. Crew and passengers had to take to the lifeboats. Without officially signing off, Bas returned to Rotterdam by bus. In a sense, he has been “sailing” ever since, as he writes in his autobiographical publication No Sea Too High – No Land Too Far, self-published in 2019.

To be admitted to the Rotterdam art academy, he took evening and Saturday courses there, where he got to know the teachers—a veritable Eldorado after his frustrating school years. He enrolled in the sculpture/monumental department.

“At the time, it was still a small department, with only four or five students per year. I was impressed by the monumentality of the works by Gust Romijn [1922–2010] and Henk de Vos [1911–1982], who taught us. During my studies, I witnessed a pivotal moment when the plaster models were loudly cheered as they were tossed from the fourth floor onto the street. I don’t look back on that with pride.”

The young sculptors were breaking with tradition. For work in public space, a new, conditional approach emerged: where would the work be placed? What is the history of the location—the genius loci? Who are the users, and what is their cultural background? What are the social dynamics, the landscape characteristics, the traffic situation? Which architectural references apply? This analytical method was formalized between 1963 and 1967 at the Arnhem Academy of Art, led by Peter Struycken and Berend Hendriks, and is now known as the Arnhem School. In Rotterdam, the influence was less direct, but the material-based and craft-oriented approach to sculpture was also being challenged there.

“For me, it was mainly about the position a sculpture occupies—its spatial presence in relation to architecture. Early on, I was struck by the Basque-Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida [1924–2002], who made bold works inspired by industrial forms: massive, monumental steel sculptures. But I was also deeply moved by the more conceptual work of Giuseppe Penone [1947], who focuses on the interaction between humans and nature. One of my favorite public sculptures in Rotterdam is his Elevazione on the Westersingel—a bronze cast of a treetop-less tree supported by young alders. The larger those alders grow, the higher Penone’s sculpture is lifted.”

As a representative of Arte Povera, Penone has had a major influence on contemporary sculpture. His organic forms, directly derived from nature, have particularly impacted Van Leeuwen’s autonomous work, which contrasts with the more anthropomorphic approach of Chillida, who gave industrial, mechanical forms a sculptural soul.

Even before enrolling at the academy, Van Leeuwen had traveled extensively across Europe. Working for his family’s transport company, he retrieved stranded tourists with a flatbed trailer on behalf of the Dutch ANWB automobile club. His routes extended from the Arctic Circle to North Africa. During his time at the academy, he often hitched rides to Paris on refrigerated trucks for ten guilders, delivering goods to Les Halles and spending the rest of the weekend exploring the city and its museums. In his third year, he expanded his international experience by embarking on an adventurous journey to Mexico and Guatemala with a fellow student. The impressions from Central America left a clear mark on his early ceramic sculptures, which appear improvised and assembled, featuring shapes and symbols of non-Western origin. These works incorporate elements of pre-Columbian cultures, Aztec and Toltec sculptures, and the murals of Diego Rivera (1886–1957). Van Leeuwen’s early work shows that his artistry operates at a crossroads, constantly prompting him to choose a path that remains true to himself.

This exchange with unfamiliar and unseen visual languages from other cultures remains vital to the formation of his sculptures throughout his life. Starting in 1984, he taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam—first as a sculpture teacher, then as coordinator of the Autonomous Sculpture department, and eventually as head of the Fine Arts department. He frequently organized trips abroad, often in collaboration with local embassies, which helped open doors around the world and offer insight into artistic worldviews that he and his students might not otherwise encounter.

“I worked at the Rietveld Academie for twenty-five years. Art education has always felt like a natural extension of my artistic practice. It influenced the development of my own work, though I had less time for it during those years. What some artists might consider side activities—such as advising or serving on committees—has always been integral to my practice.
From 1997 to 2024, I served as an external consultant for Public Art in Rotterdam. Twice a year, I would conduct inspections of the roughly 430 sculptures in the city. If maintenance or repairs were needed, I reported it to the city’s public works department. That gave me in-depth knowledge of public art in practice. I also created a number of public commissions myself, often in close collaboration with architects.”

His commissioned works are often more narrative in character than his autonomous sculptures, which are typically abstract. The use of stainless steel gives them a geometric, almost clinical appearance—yet they still possess a kind of sculptural “body” that feels timeless in its spatial form. Van Leeuwen has an explanation for this contrast:

“Commissions come with a set of conditions. There’s usually already a concept or theme in place—one I didn’t come up with myself but that originates from the intentions of the architect, the expectations of stakeholders like local authorities, residents’ committees, public consultation processes, and so on. As an artist, I try to honor those as much as I can without compromising my own visual language.
For example, I’ve often incorporated schematic floor plans into my sculptures as reliefs—something that goes all the way back to my first trip to Central America, where I encountered traces of lost architecture in the landscape. I reveal places that had long been invisible. With these kinds of works, there’s always the question of how to interpret them, because they are composed of assembled, often disparate elements. The questions they raise—what are we looking at, and what does it mean?—need to be at least partially answerable.
For me, the feeling a sculpture evokes happens mostly during the act of making; articulating it afterward is a different skill, and not one I’m particularly good at. At the train station in Boskoop stands my sculpture Tree(2016). Yes, the title suggests you’re looking at trees, but the form actually originated from a cloud. My wall sculpture Birds in Gorinchem from 1976 is one of my most figurative works, but the bird motifs involved all kinds of purely constructivist challenges: it’s fifty-four meters high and had to be installed with scaffolding and a lift. Wind load was a decisive factor in the design, and anchor plates were added inside the façade to prevent vibrations.
With such works, content and execution are always interdependent. I use abstract geometry that nonetheless results in recognizable forms by applying it modularly—sometimes forming an arrow shape, with various variations. I also often apply the classic academy exercise of boldeling—creating spatial impact by removing or adding to a form—within a modular system.
In that sense, I also admire Alexander Calder [1898–1976]; his mobiles command entire spaces. Sometimes it’s simply about enabling looking, playing, or sitting, like with the sculpture I made in Delft in 1981.”

In his autonomous work, the Celestial Bodies series marks a high point in his career. These twelve monumental sculptures made of stainless steel were inspired by a map of the universe showing spatial spirals, unidentifiable objects, and black holes that sparked his imagination.

“They are amorphous and unnameable. I make them in stainless steel, type 316 — that’s acid-resistant. Other types of stainless steel will rust if a dog pees on them. By brushing and polishing the material, the steel takes on the colors of its surroundings. I engrave graphic symbols into the surface of the sculptures to create light refraction. You can think of hieroglyph-like characters I invent myself, along with lines and frames. Back in art school, I worked on prints with a group of senior students, and I now apply that experience in my sculptures.”

All of Bas van Leeuwen’s sculptures share a common purpose: they mark his position as an artist in the world. He does so in an earthy, grounded way — connected to where he lives and works — while also engaging with diverse locations through a socially engaged lens and, in a spiritual sense, by portraying his relationship with the universe. His sculptures map out how he stands in life and what existence offers him.