A stately and at the same time vulnerable fisherman figure holds a fish in the air and stares blankly at a water feature with a heavily built-up background. The theme of this sculpture from 1967 is the relationship between man and nature in an urban environment. Sculptor Szebenyi found inspiration in the proximity of industry and how it is at odds with life in and around a river, with both animals and people.
The work was commissioned by the Hungarian city of Tiszaszederkény, for a site on the banks of the Tisza, then a river without fish. "From a fisherman's point of view, such a river is dead. Today's Don Quixote is the fisherman of this dead river. Its verticality expresses a rising heap, in contrast to the horizontal of the surrounding great Hungarian plain, harmonizing with the surrounding factory chimneys," the artist wrote in 1968.
The Tisza, the main tributary of the Danube, crosses Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia and is infamous because of its heavily polluted water. In 2000, cyanide and heavy metals killed all life in the river (again). The accident was described as Europe's worst ecological disaster since Chernobyl.
For unknown reasons the commissioned sculpture did not stay in Hungary, but traveled to Antwerp for the 9th Middelheim Biennale in 1967. After all, Szebenyi was considered an innovator of Hungarian sculpture and opposed the socialist realism of the "official " art. He emigrated to Canada in 1968. The fisherman's figure remained in Antwerp: vzw Schoon Antwerpen bought it and donated it to the Middelheim Museum. The artist himself also donated a small scale model (scale model), a print (monotype) and two drawings for the collection.
In 2020, this artwork couldn’t remain on its location in Ekeren, where it had been standing since 1988, due to infrastructural changes. The Middelheim Museum proposed the relocation of the statue on the Left Bank to the district of Antwerp after conservation treatment. Creating opportunities for developing values and significance of museum objects is one of the collection policy strategies. By lending them, instead of keeping them in depot, the works of art can acquire new meanings. After consultation with local residents and representatives of associations on the Left Bank, the district opted for relocation on the walking path on the Galgenweellaan.
