The eight-meter-high sculpture Vertical Composition has seen a lot since it was inaugurated in 1958. After being hit, vandalized and tested by the forces of the weather, the sculpture is now re-inaugurated outside the Forum Medicum in Lund.
When the Department of Physiology at Lund University moved into its new premises on Sölvegatan in Lund in the mid-1950s, Arne Jones' sculpture Vertical composition was bought in as a public decoration. The sculpture came to the campus after a close collaboration between the department building's architect Klas Anshelm and the professor of physiology Georg Kahlson.
In 1980, the sculpture was damaged for the first time in a storm. When the artist Jones died a few years earlier, the artist Thure Thörn was asked to fix the sculpture, which was made of copper. The work then stood majestically on the campus for many years, but after it was subjected to vandalism and another severe storm, Akademiska Hus had to take the sculpture down for safety reasons in 2011.
Recreated in new material after good cooperation
The sculpture was then stored in Akademiska Hus for many years and was considered too damaged to be put up again. But after a close collaboration between Lund University, the State Council for the Arts and Akademiska Hus, a recreated version of the work now stands outside the newly built Forum Medicum – the extension of the Biomedical Center (BMC) which has been ready since May 2023. This time it is the artists Viggo Wichmann and Marc Rizell who has created a new version of the work in stainless steel.