Fritz Wotruba, 'Kopf', bronze sculpture, 1958

Fritz Wotruba (1907-1975), 'Kopf' - Head, sculpture in patinated bronze on a travertine base, signed and numbered 93 on a side, 1958.
Sculptor, born in Vienna on April 23, 1907 in Vienna, where he died on August 28, 1975. After working as an apprentice in an engraving workshop, he was a pupil of the sculptor H. Hanak at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. From 1925 he was part of the Viennese Secession and in 1938 he emigrated to Switzerland due to Nazism, remaining there until the end of the war. He returned to Vienna in 1945 as a teacher at the Academy and always lived there. His first exhibition was held in Essen in 1931. From 1932 onwards he participated in numerous Venice Biennials and held exhibitions in Europe and America.
An artist of great coherence, since his youth he has pursued a personal path, independent of any movement or manner. The rigorous and constant theme of his sculpture is the human figure, created with a commitment to geometric abstraction in monumental structures, conceived almost as caryatids of an ideal architecture. Mostly cut directly into the stone, his anthropomorphic, archaic and immobile stelae are hewn into large blocks on whose planes the light lands dazzlingly in contrast with the clear profiles and deep cuts, animating the surfaces with a powerful and restrained vitality.