Belichaamde Eenheid

The new Unilever head office, which was built on the west side of the complex on the former Land van Hoboken, was richly decorated with works of art. Each floor of the staircase features an artwork. Twelve works by twelve artists from twelve European countries where Unilever was active. But the most important work was the large sculpture at the main entrance. In 1958 Unilever commissioned this piece from the Amsterdam sculptor Wessel Couzijn (1912-1984).

According to the sculptor, it depicts the margarine and soap company as an outsider sees it: incomprehensible, even though you sense that some organizing mind is at work here, steering all that has been collected in a particular direction.

Stan Huygens, De Telegraaf, 28 November 1962

Couzijn lived much of his youth in New York, and the Jewish artist also spent World War II in America. It was there that he came into contact with Ossip Zadkine and Jackson Pollock. Couzijn won the Prix de Rome in 1936 and was married to the American sculptor Pearl Perlmuter.

The fact that Couzijn had previously missed out on a major Rotterdam commission probably played a role. In 1951 he came second in the competition to design a merchant navy memorial, but owing in part to public pressure, the design that finished in third place, De Boeg by Fred Carasso, was eventually selected for realization.

The design for the sculpture was approved in 1959. The Manipulator, the original title, was replaced by Corporate Entity. ‘The directors really wanted a name, even if only as a designation,’ explained Couzijn. Of course, as is customary in Rotterdam, the work soon acquired a nickname: Scrap Fraud.

Couzijn worked in an expressive, largely abstract style. ‘In his design for Unilever, he wanted to convey an active person who imposes order in a complex organizational structure.’ (Roel Arkesteijn, Beelden in Rotterdam, 2002) The sculpture consists of three parts: in the central part one can make out a human figure with wing-like limbs.

Executing the design by Couzijn in bronze was a technical feat. First he and a number of assistants made a full-scale model out of sheets of acrylic inside a specially built warehouse. This model formed the basis for the casting process, carried out using the so-called ‘lost-wax’ method, which involved coating the acrylic sheets in wax and then melting away the acrylic to leave a mould in which the bronze could then be cast. A total of sixty pieces were cast in this way and then welded together. The bronze was cast by 29-year-old M.J. Joosten in Soest, and the welding carried out by a firm called Interlas in Soesterberg. Weighing twenty thousand kilograms, the artwork was transported to Rotterdam on a flat-bottomed boat in three parts, where they were welded together. The final work was unveiled on 11 June 1963.

Mrs Van Walsum-Quispel, wife of the city mayor, carried out the unveiling. She was fearful that ‘the large, perhaps ignorant, perhaps stubborn, certainly merciless public made up of the uninitiated’ would have difficulty with the work, but she hoped they would get used to it, as they had to Zadkine and Gabo. Most art critics responded enthusiastically, however. ‘The assembled artists and critics (including some major figures from abroad, such as Pierre Courthion and Michel Seuphor from Paris and Franco Russoli from Rome) were for the most part impressed by the work,’ wrote Het Vrije Volk. Bram Hammacher, director of Museum Kröller-Müller, applauded Unilever and Rotterdam for their courage in accomplishing something so new. But the art critic in De Tijd took the view that the executed work was far less impressive than the design because of the technical constraints.

When Unilever relocated its head office to a new building on Weena, the Couzijn sculpture also moved. It acquired a new home beneath an open structure beside the entrance. Although Rotterdam has a history of moving sculptures, not everybody was pleased. Some local artists considered the work an integral part of the original building. Cor Kraat: ‘You cannot simply relocate a sculpture that occupies its site in such a monumental and distinctive way, as though it’s nothing more than an office chair.’ But the Couzijn heirs were happy with the new home, for it meant you now had a fine view of the back of the sculpture, which was just as beautiful as the front. The sculpture was sawn into pieces again and moved in September 1992, giving it a more prominent site in the city.