Large Seated Figure - Human Cathedral

Fritz Wotruba has been hailed as one of the most important twentieth-century European sculptors. After 1945, he makes signal contributions to the rebuilding of Austrian culture, especially through his influential work as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The devastations of war he has witnessed leave a lasting imprint on his work. In the late 1940s, his sculptures take on increasingly angular features. “Large Seated Figure” is a major work of this period, which marks the transition to a new phase in Wotruba’s oeuvre in which he conceives the human figure in architectonic terms. Body parts are then based on cubes and rectangular solids, later complemented by columns and pillars, from which he positively constructs his sculptures.

Not on display