BLAUW JAN

The 2020 exclusive white bronze edition of Blauw Jan – the lifelike lizard sculptures created by Hans van Houwelingen in 1994.

At Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen park in Amsterdam, forty life-size monitors, agames and iguanas crawl through the grass in between the flowerbeds, or sit motionless among a chaos of bikes and mopeds chained to the perimeter of the small park.

Lizards adapt to their situation. They survive the winter, take on the temperature and colour of their surroundings. Sometimes they lose their tails, but they don’t die because of it. These attributes have made them symbols of eternal life by tradition. They represent both death and resurrection in a constantly changing world. That is the imagination of the Leidseplein: an ever shifting stage for an ever changing play, acted out by ever varying people.