Stedelijk Museum Schiedam presents: Maria Roosen — Scrub, Rake, Pour, Sweep

With a body of work spanning over four decades, it is impossible to imagine the Dutch artworld without Maria Roosen. Her work explores themes of growth, blossoming, fertility, love, and transience and is frequently shown during group exhibitions focusing on the female perspective, at unusual cultural heritage sites, and outdoors in the public space. However, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam believes it is now time to pay homage to this grande dame of Dutch visual art with an exhibition featuring no less than 80 well-known and lesser-known works that give the public an insight into the artist’s personal journey. Maria Roosen — Scrub, Rake, Pour, Sweep is a tribute to her work that not only focuses on intuition and physicality, but also on the creative process behind her art. ​ ​ ​ ​

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam has a longstanding relationship with Maria Roosen. Apart from having various works by her in its collection, the museum presented a solo exhibition of her work once before, in 2006. Scrub, Rake, Pour, Sweep promises to become even more personal: visitors are not only offered a retrospective of the artist’s versatile work, but are also allowed an insight into her work process. Roosen’s work often evolves from personal emotions, made tangible in soft and hard materials like glass, paper, and textiles. The personal is present in everything she does, as is also obvious from the here presented 1988-1993 series ‘Dagboektekeningen’ (diary drawings), for which she made at least five drawings a day over a period of several years. 

The Jug as a symbol 

Although Roosen is best known for her breast-shaped sculptures — varying from two hanging breasts to entire bunches of them — she actually considers the Jug truly symbolic for her work. The object represents pouring and receiving. Her Jugs are vessels for fluids, but they have also evolved from fluid matter themselves; in the first place from watercolour paint and subsequently from glass. Solidified energy. This makes the Jug the pre-eminent poetic symbol of this exhibition, making frequent appearances in her works. ​

Feel, Act, and Think  

The exhibition’s unusual title refers to Roosen’s intensive working method during which everything evolves from her perception and intuition. They are the point of departure for her actions. The practical, repetitive actions involved in her working process allow her to arrive at the essence of what she wants to convey. Glassblowing, for instance, is a process of growth and collaboration process, with the blown bubble slowly transforming into a shape. It also involves chance, something she is only too happy to embrace.

Maria Roosen: “My working method is inextricably linked to growth, and this applies to making glass as well as to knitting. Growth is the strongest force there is, just look at nature.” 

The exhibition 

Museum director Anne de Haij: “Over the past few years I frequently encountered Maria Roosen’s work in group exhibitions, and each time it left a profound impression on me. At the same time I felt an urge to once again present her body of work as a whole, also including her own personal story. While many of our younger visitors are not yet very familiar with her work, they are still drawn to it due to its themes and craftsmanship. This makes it a win-win situation. We are not only giving Maria Roosen the tribute she, in my view, deserves, but are also allowing our young visitors an opportunity to discover her oeuvre. We have asked curator Inez Piso-Tuncay to collaborate with Maria for this exhibition.” ​

Featuring a total of eighty artworks, the exhibition immerses visitors in the world of Maria Roosen, allowing them to find out who this artist is and which common threads run through her work. Over fifty of these pieces are taken from Maria’s own collection and have rarely, if ever, been exhibited before. Even people who are already familiar with her work will undoubtedly be surprised by this exhibition. Furthermore, it will include her most recent works. 

An important piece shown at the start of the exhibition, for instance, is a drawing that has never been shown before. It depicts a gun enveloped in a soft, deep pink, fluid watercolour paint film. The artwork questions the contradictions between hard and soft, male and female. It is often said that the gun — an object that throughout history has been mainly held by men, fingers firmly on the trigger — has determined the course of history. But is that really true? After all, have women — carrying water and food in jugs, pans, and pitchers — not actually been responsible for safeguarding the survival of humanity? 

Fluidity as an attitude to life 

In Maria Roosen’s oeuvre, ‘fluidly moving along with the stream’ is an important connecting thread; in a literal sense regarding her use of watercolour paints and molten glass, but also figuratively referring to her mentality. ​ 

The intensive collaboration with curator Inez Piso-Tuncay has resulted in a call for tenderness, openness, and intuition in a world filled with judgements and harshness. 

Maria Roosen: “In the beginning of my art practice it was absolutely not done for artists to say that their work had evolved from their intuition. It was dismissed as art for women. The fact that today there is more space and acceptance for this is wonderful, but at the same time also a dire necessity.” 

Biography 

Maria Roosen (1957, Oisterwijk) grew up in the Dutch province of Brabant, on a biodynamic farm, rooted in anthroposophical ideas. ​ It was there that her interest in growth and nature was first sparked. Having studied at the Moller Instituut in Tilburg from 1976 to 1981, she continued her studies at the art academy in Arnhem between 1981 and 1983. In 1995 her career really took off when her work— together with that of Marlène Dumas and Marijke van Warmerdam — was shown in the Dutch Pavilion during the 46^th Venice Biennale. She then exhibited her work in her first solo exhibitions at venues such as Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (1999), Groninger Museum (2001), and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2006). Frequently included in group exhibitions, art events, and exhibitions at cultural heritage site exhibitions, her work is increasingly presented within the context of femininity and feminism. Roosen has won multiple awards for her oeuvre of complete work, including the Wilhelminaring (2006), the Singer Oeuvreprijs (2009), and the Jeanne Oosting Prijs (2020). Her work is included in various museum collections, including those of Museum Arnhem, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Noord-Brabants Museum, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, and Museum Voorlinden. She has also realized many temporary or permanent artworks in the public space. Maria Roosen lives and works in Arnhem. 

About the curator: Inez Piso-Tuncay is director of the artist-in-residence and exhibition space HMK Hotel Maria Kapel in Hoorn, as well as a freelance curator. 

Museum square 

Stedelijk Museum Schiedam is increasingly using the museum square as the ‘entrance’ to its exhibitions. Earlier, works by Anne Wenzel (July 2023 and January 2024), Oscar Peters (October 2024) and Sabine Marcelis (October 2024-June 2025) have been shown on the square, alongside the permanent work ‘De feestprikkers’ (party sticks) by Onno Poiesz. With two eye-catching works, Maria Roosen - Scrub, Rake, Pour, Sweep will also begin on the square. 

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