Picasso in the Vondelpark

A Picasso on the grass

Most people who walk through the Vondelpark are looking at the ducks, the ponds or the person on the next bench. Few look at the sculpture on the lawn. It is a real Picasso, and it has stood here since 1965.

The work is known in Amsterdam as The Fish. You can walk right up to it, walk around it and stay as long as you like. There is no queue, no guard and no ticket.

That is the charm. A name like Picasso usually means a museum, a hushed room and a rope. Here it is outdoors, among joggers, cyclists and people with picnics. It is worth the walk for that contrast alone.

The park around it

The Fish dates from 1965, a hundred years after the park opened. The park began in 1865 as Nieuwe Park, the New Park. Jan David Zocher designed it in the English landscape style, with winding paths, open lawns and clumps of trees. His son Louis Paul Zocher designed the last part, finished in 1877.

It started as a private project. A group of citizens led by Christiaan Pieter van Eeghen bought grassland and marshes at the edge of the city. At first the park was free for members of their association, and other people paid to get in. In 1953 the association gave the park to the city.

The Fish arrived in the decade after that. In the 1960s and 1970s the Vondelpark became known as a place where almost anything was allowed. A Picasso on the lawn suits that mood. The sources I have do not say how the sculpture came to be here, so I will not guess.

There are two other statues in the park. One is Joost van den Vondel, the 17th-century poet and playwright the park is named after, placed here in 1867. The other is Mama Baranka by Nelson Carrilho, from 1985.

What to look for

Stand a few steps back first and take it in as a whole. Then walk round it slowly. A sculpture that looks one way from the path can look quite different from the other side, so give it a full circle before you decide what you think.

Picasso is famous for reducing a subject to a few bold choices. Ask yourself what you recognise as a fish, and what is only suggested.

Then look at the setting. The grass, the trees and the open sky are part of how it reads. This is a work meant to sit outdoors, in changing light.

Notice also who is not looking. Runners pass it on their usual loop. Someone is probably asleep on the grass nearby. That is how the Fish lives here, as part of an ordinary afternoon.

On the way, listen for the parakeets. Wild rose-ringed parakeets have lived in the park since the 1970s, and you will often hear them before you see them.