Sale: 375 / Post War / Contemporary Art, Dec. 04. 2010 in Munich Lot 134

 
Fritz Koenig - Säulenkaryatide


134
Fritz Koenig
Säulenkaryatide, 1965.
Bronze
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 37,800
Sold:
€ 39,040 / $ 42,163

(incl. surcharge)
Bronze with brown patina
Clarenbach Sk 368. With name. One of 5 copies. 212 x 67 x 67 cm (83,4 x 26,3 x 26,3 in)

PROVENANCE: Private collection New York.
Private collection Southern Germany.

Fritz Koenig studied sculpting at the Munich Academy of Art from 1945 to 1952 in Anton Hiller´s class, interrupted by a scholarship to France in 1951. Koenig has frequently been commissioned to create sculptures for public buildings since the 1950s. He also executed small sculptures and was particularly interested in the sculptural problem of drawing groups of several figures together within one single contour. The result of these analysis was the so-called 'Mengeplastiken'. Koenig spent six months as a scholar at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1957. Among all his impressions in the "eternal city", the motif of the Quadriga was the most important one. Other international successes followed, such as the artist's participation at the XXIX. Biennale in Venice in 1958 - Koenig received the prize for sculpting of the International Liturgical Institute in Rome - and at the II. documenta in Kassel in 1959. The very same year the gallery Günther Franke in Munich showed a first one-man show. The gallery Staempfli in New York showed his first exhibition in the USA in 1961. In 1964 Koenig was appointed to the chair for plastic design at the Technische Universität Munich. The same year he participated in the documenta 3 in Kassel and the XXXII. Biennale in Venice.

It was for the regular co-operation with architects on fountains and other architectural works that Koenig‘s awareness of tectonic and constructive questions increased. He examined the interplay of loads and supports within forms. In the classic motif of the caryatid, the guise of a heavy load with an artistically designed figure found its evident formulation. Koenig transferred it to a canon of geometric forms, bars, cubs and beams that are connected by biomorph elements. Koenig‘s caryatids loose their obvious architectural function and replace the traditional concept of the antropomorph support beam with an abstract interpretation of the tectonic principle.

From 1967-1971 Koenig was working at the 'Große Kugelkaryatide' commissioned by the Port Authority New York for the fountains of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. As early as in 1969 Koenig became a member of the ‘Akademie der Künste’ in Berlin and the ‘Bayrische Akademie der Schönen Künste’ in Munich. The monument of the Federal Republic of Germany in the former concentration camp Mauthausen was erected in 1983. This was followed by exhibitions at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich (1988), at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (1989) and at the Galerie Pels-Leusden in Berlin in 1992. Prof. Fritz Koenig and his wife Maria donated their collection to the city of Landshut in 1993, the same year Fritz Koenig was awarded the "Bayerischer Maximiliansorden für Kunst und Wissenschaft". His monument to the victims of the terrorist attack at the Olympic Games in 1972 was erected in the Munich Olympiapark in 1995. The "Skulpturenmuseum in Hofberg" opened in 1998 with the retrospective exhibition "Fritz Koenig. Skulptur und Zeichnung" 1942 - 1997". In co-operation with the ‘Bayerischer Rundfunk’ the director Percy Adlon produced the film 'Koenigs Kugel. Der deutsche Bildhauer Fritz Koenig im Trümmerfeld von Ground Zero' in 2001. [SM].




134
Fritz Koenig
Säulenkaryatide, 1965.
Bronze
Estimate:
€ 35,000 / $ 37,800
Sold:
€ 39,040 / $ 42,163

(incl. surcharge)