In honor of the recently deceased sculptor / medal maker Wilfried Put (1932-2016) Museum Beelden aan Zee decorates a display case with his work.
In 1932 Wilfried Put was born into a family of 11 children of the notable head teacher of the local Catholic elementary school in De De Rijp, Noord-Holland. 

After graduating from the trade school he worked at the goldsmith company Brom, in Utrecht. At age 17, Wilfried decided to continue his training as a goldsmith, and left the factory to attend the Arts and Crafts school in Amsterdam. After this training he worked as technical assistant to sculptors Cor Hund and Johan van Zweden. Hund, and especially his wife Willie Hund-Smit, encouraged him to continue sculpting by advising him to enroll in the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. It is here where, in addition to Cor Hund, Piet Esser became his inspiring teacher.

Wilfried Put made images for the municipalities of Zandvoort, Bolsward, Amsterdam, Leusden and Rotterdam. During his long career he also held lectureships at the art academy Minerva in Groningen and at the Crea Foundation, at the University of Amsterdam.

Medal of art

Medal art was considered to be Put's great love. The Association for Medal Art commissioned him to the Breitner medal in 1962. Later he was commissioned by the same association to design a medal with the image of Piet Esser. Put continued to design many medals, e.g. for the Charlotte van Pallandt Prize in 1978, which was the encouragement prize for sculptor, set by the sculptor Van Pallandt.

Wilfried Put, December 20, 2016: "For me, a penny is preferably a portrait medal, which I find that the most compelling. Since it demands taking a ply to people. Everything of the person depicted on the medal must be there. Everything you know about that person you want to register and convey in the portrait. That goes for shapes, of course, thereby creating composition, thickness and height and expression. Everything that the portayed person expresses must be included. It is not just a snapshot, it has to be more, you have to 'touch' that person. There is almost no backside to my work. Then it was actually ready. Such a flip side is a necessity. Usually a name, date and social status must be given, and that does not interest me."

Method

With a few exceptions, Put has not made models of the medals, except in the very first set-up. By grating, scratching and sanding, the shapes moved over a slice of dry clay until they found their place and shape. During the first phase, the medal was still about 80 mm Ø, with each subsequent state, in which the clay shrank, the medal became smaller.

Wilfried Put started from the figurative, while during the work the penning became more abstract, then the other aspects of sculpture became more and more prominent: the play of forms and the composition.

Exhibition

In addition to completed medals, the display case also includes preliminary studies, drawings, various states of medals, photographs and notes. In Wilfried Put's library, the image / relief Massa, a bronze rectangle with heads, in which the portraits of the various tokens are recognizable, on one side the medals are positive and on the other side negative. The bronze statue is mounted on a wooden box from the Wilfried workshop. Probably the wooden box and the wooden modeling pen - a gift from the heirs of Wilfried Put to the museum - once used by the sculptor Johan Reicher (Berlin-Niederschönhausen, 1895- Amsterdam 1963), the predecessor of Wilfried in the studio in the Bellamystraat in Amsterdam.

The exhibition in the library of the museum provides insight into the background of a number of medals by an exceptional sculptor / madal maker.