Alfred Sabisch (sculptor)

Relief (1951/1952) at the Kleve district administration

Alfred Sabisch (born June 12, 1905 in Deuben , Saxony , † June 3, 1986 in Kalkar ) was a German sculptor .

Life

After an apprenticeship as a goldsmith and silversmith, Alfred Sabisch studied between 1922 and 1928 at the Academy in Leipzig . From around 1927 he went public with his first works in exhibitions and quickly gained a lot of recognition. In 1931 he received a so-called “free studio” as a support from the city of Leipzig.

In 1937, after three years in Berlin , Sabisch moved to the small town of Kalkar on the Lower Rhine . As early as 1935 he had established connections with the Duisburg Museum. In 1937 he won a competition in Duisburg with a large group of foals that was set up in front of the main train station. To Kalkar, famous for its medieval townscape and the altars in the Sankt Nicolai Church, he was drawn to peace and quiet and the opportunity to concentrate on work. Here he met the painters Hermann Teuber and Heinrich Nauen .

At the northern end of the city in the house of the piano-making family Neuhaus am Kesseltor, Sabisch found a place to stay. The neighboring “Taubenturm”, part of the medieval city wall, served as his first studio. Returning in 1945 from 5 years of military service and imprisonment, Alfred Sabisch soon became involved in the Lower Rhine artist community, from 1951 to 1962 as President of the Niederrheinischer Künstlerbund.

Alfred Sabisch's pupils are Peter Theunissen , whose sculpture “Schwalbenschwanz” is on display at the Moyland Castle Museum located between Kalkar and Kleve , and Ludwig Dinnendahl .

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Alfred Sabisch found his artistic expression unusually early and confidently. From 1927 he was present in the Leipzig exhibition scene. His sculptural work begins with animal sculptures, figurative representations and portraits. Animals and nudes remained his preferred motifs even later.

Initially, he used inexpensive stone casting as material , then wood and bronze casting , and later also many natural stones, metals and other materials. Goldsmith apprenticeship and art school ensured him permanent technical ability.

His work as a sculptor includes around 200 sculptures . In the course of the reconstruction after the war in the 1950s and 1960s, he received numerous orders to equip public buildings and churches, especially in Kleverland . Only in the last few years did the often difficult sculptural work have to recede. Sabisch increasingly turned to woodcuts and painting, which has always been cultivated . Here he processed impressions from numerous trips, but also from the atmospheric Lower Rhine.

Works on the Lower Rhine (from north to south)

• Emmerich am Rhein : coat of arms on the Rhine bridge, 1963/1964; Large relief "Liberated birds" in the entrance area of ​​Sankt Adelgundis, 1969
• Kleve : Reliefs on the district house, 1951/1952; Swan fountain in the courtyard of the Schwanenburg , 1953/1954; Coat of arms on the town hall, 1961
• Hasselt , district of Bedburg-Hau : Stoning of Stephen in the church, 1962
• Wissel , northern district of Kalkar: choir design of the Romanesque abbey church, 1958; Baptismal font, 1962
• Kalkar : Nikolaus figure in front of the secondary school at Monretor, 1965; Tombs in the cemetery; Works in the museum behind the town hall
• Louisendorf , district of Bedburg-Hau between Kalkar and Goch: pulpit reliefs in the church, 1953; Altar table, originally created for Sankt Nicolai in Kalkar, 1965/1966
• Goch : Baptistery in Sankt Magdalenen, 1965
• Uedem : Relief on the town hall, 1957
• Weeze : Relief in the elementary school, 1958
• Bottrop : Relief "Last Judgment" on the cemetery hall, 1956
• Duisburg : Figures on the town house, 1953
• Krefeld : "The Good Shepherd", relief in the primary school Bismarckstrasse, 1956; "Big fish"; Fountain in the Rote-Kreuz-Straße secondary school, 1960
• Velbert : Schlottschmiede monument, 1962
• Düsseldorf : bronze doors of the church in Unterrath , 1952

Voices on the work of Alfred Sabisch

• Professor Dr. jur. Joachim Rückert in a tribute to his father-in-law Alfred Sabisch (excerpts):

“In spite of all the movement, lyricism and musicality of some of the works, there is always a certain firmness and heaviness. The portraits are greatly reduced to type and form. The animal representations never belittle, not just imitate realistically, but are clearly stylized and shaped with all the intimacy and precision, up to the increasingly distant, but still restrained abstraction in the later works. Again and again Sabisch chooses the harmonious, the innocent, the not ugly-disturbed. Even the most outwardly large works avoid the monumental, avoid any appeal to any present or even politics, and never heroize what is always mortal. "

“This probably explains successes, tolerance and failures in the National Socialist era. The realistic, harmonious-ideal features of his sculptures allowed access and forbade the label degenerate. But the "young man" was too little athletic and intentional, the larger-than-life supermen were missing, the women were innocent, pensive, pure instead of erotic, sweet and fertile, especially the depictions of animals were anyway too apolitical, as was the choice of subject.

“From the range of art movements around 1930, Sabisch turned more to a kind of neoclassical. His nudes, the timelessly cheerful design, some archaic features, the smooth surface design, the emphatically clear but never harsh design and the titles such as Leda, Daphne, Eurydice, Sirene etc. all point in this direction. "

• Matthias Grass in the Rheinische Post on September 7, 2005 on the wooden sculpture "Daphne" by Alfred Sabisch:

“Daphne put her arms back. As if to rest, as if she wanted to fold them behind her head. She stands there naked, unprotected, the restless, the huntress, who, hit by Cupid's arrow, can no longer find love and is thus on the run from the god Apollo, who is stalking her. She has finally found peace and asked her father to give her another being. Daphne turns into a laurel tree. In his love for the nymph, Apollon gives the laurel eternal green ”.

“In 1963 Alfred Sabisch struck his Daphne in light, reddish pear wood. Although the traces of the gouge are recognizable, here too, as in many other works by the Kalkarer, the wonderfully worked surface is fascinating. Sabisch's Daphne has leaned against a tree, arms back, and looks contentedly straight out. The skin of the left half of her body is still smooth, but on the right, furrows that accentuate its curves are gently formed: the bark of the tree covers the woman's body like a robe. At the moment of the transformation, Sabisch captured the beautiful. "

Web links

• Wall frieze by Alfred Sabisch (1951/1952) ( Memento from September 30, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
• Swan fountain in the courtyard of the Schwanenburg ( memento from September 30, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )