Premio Combat Prize

Wijnand Zijlmans studied from 1971 to 1976 at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where he specialized in figurative sculpture.
In the beginning of his career he worked with clay and wax (cast in bronze), plaster, concrete and sometimes in metal , but after some time he came in touch with materials like wood and stone, where he developed a true passion, especially for granite.
By working in hard materials – from the outside to the inside - he developed inevitably a different, much more abstract and very own language.
At the end of the nineties he created, next to the regular exhibitions of free work, his first monumental sculptures, which he commissioned for municipalities, institutions, companies and individuals. From that time his work was increasingly purchased by companies, municipalities and museums for their collections.
In his new work he basically changed his approach by working from the inside to the outside.
Most of the images are assembled from many prefabricated parts into a whole.
The sculptures of Wijnand Zijlmans are a great presence for those who are susceptible to it. They are beacons of calm in our hectic life, still moments enabling us to come to ourselves for a short while. They lead to reflection and a deepening of the self. This makes them engaged sculptures, involved in the human condition. Something happens in the sculpture and between sculpture and beholder.