Lucy Sarneel

Lucy Sarneel, 2010

Lucy Sarneel’s distinctive use of fabricated zinc is inspired by its omnipresence in the objects and architecture of the Netherlands. It represents the blue-grey Dutch sky and sea, the reassuring, domestic world of drainpipes, buckets and washtubs, towers and dormer windows, She uses familiar symbols for love, protection and handcrafts, as well as forms relating to forgotten traditions, proverbs and folk art. She is, she says, ‘looking for fields of tension, both in form and material, as a metaphor for life in the quest for balance between forces which we are governed by.’ 

Lucy was born in Maastricht in 1961 and lived and worked in Amsterdam, where she died in 2020. She has given lectures and workshops at the Rietveld, Alchimia in Florence, the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and the RCA in London. Lucy’s work is held in numerous collections including the Marzee Collection, CODA Apeldoorn, the Textielmuseum in Tilburg, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. She was awarded the Marzee Prize in 2002.