Nat Neujean.

Some time ago I received a mail about the passing away of a great sculptor and great man.

I met Nat Neujean in Firenze in 1982. We met in the house of a mutual friend, Mikolash.

Nat was a older than we were.

Getting to know him was easy. He had an open spirit; he was a curious person. He heard I was a painter and immediately wanted to know about my work.

He was Belgian and spoke Dutch. This helped too.

The first meeting was overwhelming. He was commissioned to make the portrait of Mikolash’ son, Jacopo. The clay came out on the turning table from under the plastic and Nat immediately began to work with a frenetic pace. There was a tunnel between him and Jacopo. Nothing else existed.

One thing I still tell quite often. At a certain point Nat needed a piece of wire. Without hesitation he pulled the telephone wire out of the wall and phone and used it.

This characterized Nat. It showed his sense of practicality, drive and total lack of useless etiquette. As long as it worked, it was good. Reputations meant nothing to him either.

He wanted to help me; he saw something in my work and maybe also my attitude. I was very welcome at his house in Brussels. I think the first time I was guest there, was when Mikolash had a show in Brussels.

Everywhere in his house were his sculptures, always the human figure.

There is more than one sculpture that without any doubt, if ever I will have the money, I will want to possess.

Through him I found a gallery in Brussels and I had some good shows there.

I regard him as a teacher in more than one way. An important lesson I learned was that when you paint human beings bigger than life size, the proportions change. Always make the head, hands and feet smaller. This came in handy when I had the commission for the church in Modena.

Nat told me this when he was working on a big sculpture of two girls. He had first made the sketch, a sculpture of about 50 cm high. Then he made it life size, then the final one, about 4 meters high. I saw all versions in Brussels…

He had a special way of talking, always with a lot of wit, but he would never beat around the bush.

He was a sculpture himself. There was no way of pushing him around. If you shook hands, he decided how strong the handshake was. And it was clear he could crush your hand if he wanted to.

He was Jewish. He had survived the Second World War in an amazing way, but I don’t feel like telling about it here. After the war he made sketches of groups of people who are waiting to be deported. I regard them as one of the many high lights of his oeuvre. He was looking for a place to have them permanently exhibited.

Because my father worked with some influent Jewish people in Amsterdam, he tried to have them exposed there, but because of the veto on the realistic representation of human beings by Jewish laws, he could not help him.

click on the image to go to the site of the museum.

We lost contact. These things happen.

And I don’t know how, but the news came to me of the inauguration of a group of these sculptures in the museum of Mechelen. Finally a group of these deported Jews found a permanent place. I came to the opening and it was a great new encounter. I stayed for a couple of days and we said not to let so much time pass by anymore.

Alas, I have had so many times the desire to see him again, but could not find the moment or occasion. I am too late now.

Thank you for all you showed me, Nat.

Click on these words to go to his site.