Abstract art is basically a doorway to wonderment. — Hans Van de Bovenkamp
Born in the Netherlands in 1938, Hans Van de Bovenkamp immigrated to Canada with his family when he was seventeen. After trying a number of different vocations (reportedly ten within one year), Van de Bovenkamp realized that he was a natural maker. The artist enjoyed early commercial success, selling his sculptures at street fairs and marketplaces. He used the proceeds from these sales to pay his tuition at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), where he studied architecture. After completing his degree, Van de Bovenkamp moved to New York, where he designed window displays and kinetic fountains before deciding to pursue sculpture for sculpture’s sake.
Inspired by mythology, dreams, and the natural world, Van de Bovenkamp is best known for his elegantly sinuous large-scale public sculptures. One such commission, Mariner’s Gateway (1986), directly inspired Circles and Waves XX, which the sculptor created the following year. Both works allude to the concentric rings that result from a pebble or stone being thrown into water, with Circles and Waves XX being a particularly energetic take on this theme. The sculpture’s repeating circular motifs, which are unified by undulating waves, fan out at different angles to create a variety of planar dimensions. The result is an exuberant, abstracted homage to water and Nature.