Tor / Gate

“Tor” by Erwin Heerich, the formative artist of Museum Insel Hombroich, found its place in monumental size at the entrance of Düsseldorf Südpark on the occasion of the Federal Garden Show, though it is based on a smaller cardboard sculpture by the artist from the 1960s. To Heerich, cardboard sculptures, as models and even autonomous sculptures, seemed particularly suitable for the construction of his complex works which oscillate between architecture and sculpture. “Tor,” too, looks only at first glance like a simple shape based on the basic elements of column and crowning triangular segment. The complexity and asymmetry of the construction are revealed only upon closer examination. Each side of the gate consists of four stacked granite blocks of the same height, three of which form the column, while the topmost blocks form the archway. Their shapes have been described as follows: “The mass of one of the columns was reduced by a deep furrow to its centre cutting out precisely one quarter of its volume; the other was subjected to the same reduction by precisely bevelling the inner corners. The edges of furrow and bevelling are continued in the two crowning blocks, thus forming an asymmetrical pointed arch. (…) The asymmetrical openings also shift the dividing seam between the covering blocks off-centre. On the inside of the pointed arch, the covering block with the convex cross-section and the covering block with the concave cross-section meet like the hollow of a knee.” (Hans van der Grinten: Erwin Heerich. In: Bernd Dieckmann: Skulpturen im Südpark Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 56.). Therefore, even though the sculpture quotes an architectural building element, taking up and varying its construction, it must still be regarded as an autonomous sculpture that defines and structures its surrounding space.