Fritz Wotruba

Fritz WOTRUBA, born in Vien­na on 23 April 1907, com­plet­ed an appren­tice­ship as an engraver from 1921 to 1924. From 1926 to 1929 he stud­ied sculp­ture at the Kun­st­gewerbeschule in Vien­na with Anton Hanak and Eugen Stein­hof. From 1929 he worked as a free­lance artist. In 1933 the artist spent a long time in Switzer­land, where he emi­grat­ed in 1938. Fol­low­ing the call of the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na, he returned to Aus­tria in 1945. In 1948 and 1952 Wotru­ba rep­re­sent­ed Aus­tria at the Venice Bien­nale. From 1950 onwards he cre­at­ed numer­ous works for pub­lic spaces, includ­ing the “Wag­n­er Mon­u­ment” in Mainz, 1969, the “Large Reclin­ing Fig­ure” in Rot­ter­dam, 1971, build­ing-relat­ed reliefs and heads, works for the­atres in Vien­na, Athens, Berlin and the Salzburg Fes­ti­val, and an exten­sive graph­ic oeu­vre. The church “Zur heilig­sten Dreifaltigkeit” on the Geor­gen­berg in Vien­na-Mauer, built in 1974–1976, deserves spe­cial men­tion. Wotru­ba received numer­ous hon­ors and awards, includ­ing the Prize of the City of Vien­na, 1947, the Great Aus­tri­an State Prize and the Grand Prix of the World Exhi­bi­tion in Brus­sels, and in 1958 and 1971 the Aus­tri­an Dec­o­ra­tion of Hon­or for Sci­ence and Art. Wotruba’s human fig­ures were ini­tial­ly in the tra­di­tion of real­ism. After 1945, the artist increas­ing­ly worked with cubic for­mal ele­ments. After 1945, Fritz Wotru­ba helped Aus­tri­an sculp­ture gain an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion through his works and his many years of teach­ing at the Vien­na Acad­e­my. Fritz Wotru­ba dies in Vien­na on 28 August 1975.
1950 — first exhi­bi­tion in the Welz Gallery.