Bombardement van Rotterdam 1940 1940 - 1946

This medal, “Bombardement van Rotterdam 1940,” was made by Cor van Kralingen. It is an artwork that functions as a memorial. I imagine the artist making this medal, and the difficulty of representing such an event on such a small scale. You can see the ruins of the church in the background, with these snaking lines above it. Are those contrails from the planes? I think of the process of how the medal came into being, the trial, error, and intuition. What was it like to design and engrave? This reminds me of when I made a painting once based on a tiny thumbnail sketch. The act of making something monumental out of something small, and vice versa.