Early Forms (Von der Heydt Museum)

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Tony Cragg: Early Forms - amphora / jar
Tony Cragg: Early Forms - Mortar / Bottle

Early Forms is the name of two bronze - sculptures of the British sculptor Tony Cragg from 1990/1991 that the front of the entrance Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal are. The two sculptures also bear the title Von der Heydt sculptures and the individual names amphora / can and mortar / bottle . They belong to Cragg's series of sculptures of the same name in the Early Forms , which was created between 1987/88 and the year 2000.

history

Old Elberfeld town hall with lion sculptures in front of the entrance, lithograph by Henry Abbot , 1828

The two sculptures Early Forms by Tony Cragg have flanked the entrance to the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal since 1991. The building originally housed the Old Elberfeld Town Hall , in front of which there were two Bergische Lions made of bronze until 1877 based on a design by Christian Daniel Rauch . When the Von der Heydt Museum was renovated between 1985 and 1990, the idea arose to bring the historical lion sculptures back in front of the building. The then museum director Sabine Fehlemann advocated putting up modern sculptures instead of lions. Eberhard Robke , chairman of the Wuppertal Art and Museum Association , supported this idea. The sculptor Tony Cragg, who lives in Wuppertal, was selected as the artist for the sculptures to be created. He sketched the design for the Early Forms "free-hand", as Robke later recalled. Then the models were created in the artist's workshop, after which the bronze sculptures were then cast in the Kittl foundry in Düsseldorf. The two sculptures could be acquired for the Von der Heydt Museum with financial support from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Stadtsparkasse Wuppertal at a price of DM 256,800. The works of art were displayed on March 17, 1991.

description

The early forms on the pedestals in front of the entrance to the Wuppertaler Von der Heydt Museum are two bronze objects with the dimensions 165 cm × 140 cm × 256 cm and 203 cm × 112 cm × 259 cm. Brass panels on the pedestals of the sculptures refer to the works as amphora / jar or mortar / bottle . The two double vessel forms belong to the early works in the series of sculptures Early Forms and are the first in the series that Cragg created for public spaces. He described the thoughts that led him to this series at the end of the 1980s: “I realized that I was going to have to make objects in which the form makes itself apparent as an external skin.” (Analogously: I realized that I make objects in which the form becomes visible as an outer skin. ) Cragg then created sculptures in which different forms merged into one another. Neither the original components were easily recognizable, nor could the new shapes be clearly identified as objects.

The two sculptures in front of the Von der Heydt Museum are shaped objects in which the material from an unknown original shape appears stretched, stretched and twisted until a new shape is created. The sculptures are characterized by a smooth surface, flowing contours and a gap accentuated by folded edges, which allows a view of the interior. Former museum director Sabine Fehlemann saw in the Early Forms in front of the museum, on the one hand, the fusion of an antique amphora with a cola or beer can, and on the other hand a mortar that was connected to a modern plastic bottle. For her, the sculptures show the merging of “old and new or of museum piece and throwaway object”. Fehlemann described the two sculptures as “key works” for Tony Cragg's Early Forms series. There is a second bronze cast of the two sculptures, which was made in 1989 and is in a private American collection.

literature

  • Gerhard Finckh , The Cragg Foundation (Ed.): Anthony Cragg: parts of the world . From Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-89202-094-3 .
  • Sabine Fehlemann (Ed.): Tony Cragg: Atelier: Wuppertal, sculptures and drawings of the 90s . From the Heydt Museum, Wuppertal 1999, ISBN 978-3-89202-038-7 .
  • Sabine Fehlemann: From the Heydt Museum Wuppertal, sculpture collection . Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, revised edition 2000, ISBN 978-3-89202-040-0 .

Web links

Commons : Cans (Tony Cragg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Early Forms is the name in Gerhard Finckh, The Cragg Foundation (Ed.): Anthony Cragg: parts of the world . P. 252. This term can also be found in Sabine Fehlemann (ed.): Tony Cragg: Atelier: Wuppertal, Sculptures and Drawings of the 90s , p. 84.
  2. ↑ In the directory of the sculpture collection of the Von der Heydt Museum, the sculptures are referred to as Von der Heydt sculpture I: amphora / box and Von der Heydt sculpture II: mortar / bottle . As a comment, it is stated at the same point that the name Early Forms was chosen in the catalog for the Cragg exhibition in 1999 , see Sabine Fehlemann: Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal, Skulpturensammlung , p. 76.
  3. ↑ Andreas Boller: Eberhard Robke gives away art with great radiance . Article in the Westdeutsche Zeitung of March 31, 2017.
  4. ↑ Early Forms is the official name of the artist, see Sabine Fehlemann: Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal, Skulpturensammlung , p. 76.
  5. ↑ Information about the purchase on www.denkmal-wuppertal.de
  6. ↑ Dimensions see exhibition catalog Gerhard Finckh, The Cragg Foundation (ed.): Anthony Cragg: parts of the world , p. 252. Deviating from this, the dimensions are 156 cm × 133 cm × 239 cm and 194 cm × 121 cm × 271 cm in Sabine Fehlemann (Ed.): Tony Cragg: Atelier: Wuppertal, sculptures and drawings of the 90s , p. 84.
  7. ↑ Quotation in: Exhibition catalog Gerhard Finckh, The Cragg Foundation (Ed.): Anthony Cragg: parts of the world , p. 302.
  8. ↑ See Sabine Fehlemann: Tony Cragg - Atelier , pp. 9-10.
  9. ↑ See Sabine Fehlemann: Tony Cragg - Atelier , pp. 9-10.
  10. ↑ See Sabine Fehlemann: Tony Cragg - Atelier , p. 5.
  11. ↑ The second bronze cast also has the dimensions 165 cm × 140 cm × 256 cm and 203 cm × 112 cm × 259 cm. See Gerhard Finckh, The Cragg Foundation (ed.): Anthony Cragg: parts of the world , p. 472.