Dirk Wolbers

The Dutch sculptor, medalist, and draftsman Dirk Wolbers lived and worked mainly in Den Haag. He received his first training as a sculpture from Leon Gobert (1869-1935) in Mons (BEL). From 1905, he attended the “Tekenschool voor den Werkenden Stand” (Drawing School for the Working Class). In 1907, he entered the Reich’s Academy in Amsterdam and continued his studies at the Academy in Brussels from 1910. He visited Paris and London in 1913. In 1916, he became a member of the artists’ association “Pulchri Studio” in Den Haag.

Some of Wolbers’ best-known works are the seven niche figures in the courtyard of the Rotterdam City Hall, the monument commemorating the 1906 storm flood in Kloosterzande, and the monument honoring the Dutch resistance during World War II at the Grote Kerkhof in Deventer. The sculptor died in 1957 in a traffic accident with his car. His brother Johannes Godfried (1892-1962) lived as an architect in The Hague.