Antes-Brunnen / Antes Fountain

Horst Antes gained wide acclaim in the 1960s for his Kopffüßler / Head-Footers. In 1983, he began developing a group of works called Votives, which started out as small figures cut from gold foil. These figures were the basis for the group of fountains he then designed for the square in front of the east entrance of Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof. Three groups of silhouetted stainless steel figures and three water basins were used to divide the square and depict different scenes.
Der Ring / The Ring is a densely packed group of 15 oversized silhouettes. The title may refer to the round object that one of the advancing figures is holding, or to the notion of a group of people coming together. Although their different poses show reverence or even worship, the scene also contains certain threatening elements: there is a head on the ground and a snake emerging from the chest of one of the figures.
The motif of the snake is doubled in the second group of figures, which also includes a table, a chair, a person eating, and a person lying on the table. A head and some dishes on the ground complete the absurdly chaotic scene, which is made all the more visually disorienting by how perspective is used to portray the angular furniture. This group is called Die Fresser / The Eaters.
Die Insel / The Island is situated in the middle of one of the water basins and depicts a human figure and a snake emerging amidst tall reeds.
The recurring motif in all of the groups is the snake. According to Werner Haftman, it can be interpreted in Antes’s Votives as a sign of the inevitable new beginning that comes after ruin. Michale Voets believes it represents the messenger of an ominous fate. The snake here is the driving force behind the figures, which are reacting to threats and chaos with different coping strategies.

Reference: http://www.duesseldorf.de/kulturamt/dkult