Fritz Koenig

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Fritz Koenig 2015
"Large Column Caryatids" (1967) in Braunschweig
" Flora III " (1971) in the cabinet garden of the Munich Residence

Fritz Koenig (born June 20, 1924 in Würzburg ; † February 22, 2017 in Altdorf (Lower Bavaria) ) was a German sculptor .

Life

Koenig moved to Landshut with his parents in 1930 . After graduating from secondary school in 1942, later known as the Hans-Leinberger-Gymnasium , he was drafted into military service and took part in the German-Soviet War as a soldier and was taken prisoner. From 1946 to 1952 he studied sculpture at the Munich Art Academy with Anton Hiller , in 1951 he studied in Paris . In 1959 he took part in the II. Documenta in Kassel and in 1964 in the documenta III . In the same year he was appointed professor for sculptural design at the Technical University of Munich , where he participated in the training of architects until 1992 . He lived and worked on a thoroughbred Arabian stud in Ganslberg near Landshut since 1961 .

In June 2018 , the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described the condition of Koenig's studio on the Ganslberg as “acutely endangered”.

plant

The damaged sphere in New York's Battery Park

Some of his sculptures consist of simple geometric bodies . For example, he stylized the head of a human body with a steel ball and the torso with a few cylindrical rods. His design for the Berlin Holocaust Memorial shows these stylized heads and bones piled up to form a wall.

Koenig was the founder of the Landshut Sculpture Museum in the Hofberg . From 1961 to 1972 he was a board member of the German Association of Artists .

Fritz Koenig hit the headlines after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 with the "Big Ball Karyatide ", better known as " The Sphere ", created by him from 1967 to 1971 . The bronze ball survived the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, badly damaged . Inside the torn sculpture, parts of the wreckage of the aircraft that crashed into the towers were found. On March 11, 2002, the sculpture was erected as a memorial in Battery Park , New York .

Since June 21, 2018, Fritz Koenig's works have been shown in a three-month special exhibition in the Florentine Uffizi and several of his sculptures in the Boboli Gardens in Florence.

The cultural journalist Hans Kratzer wrote in an obituary that Koenig was "one of the most important German sculptors of the 20th century".

Important works (selection)

Memorial to the victims of the 1972 Olympic attack , 1995

Awards

Filmography

  • 2001: Koenigs Kugel - The German sculptor Fritz Koenig in the rubble field of Ground Zero

photos

literature

  • Koenig, Fritz . In: Supreme Building Authority Munich (Hrsg.): Bildwerk Bauwerk Artwork - 30 years of art and state building in Bavaria . Bruckmann, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7654-2308-4 , p. 74-75, 176-177, 198-199, 262-263 .
  • King, Fritz . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 80 .
  • Wolfgang A. Herrmann: Fritz König (obituary), TUMCampus 4/19, p. 66
  • Christoph Wagner : “Johannes Itten: tapestries; Hermann Kleinknecht: Stopped Movement; Fritz König: Great Landscape; Richard Triebe: the helpers of medical science “, in: Art on campus , ed. by Christoph Wagner, Regensburger Universitätsverlag, Regensburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8684-5030-9 , pp. 92-95; 104-109; 116-119; 194-197.

Web links

Commons : Fritz Koenig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Fritz Koenig is dead. Landshut mourns the loss of world-famous sculptors. Bayerischer Rundfunk , February 23, 2017, accessed on March 2, 2017 .
  2. ↑ school website
  3. ^ [Annual report of the school 1941/42]
  4. ↑ Fritz Koenig turns 80 . Press release of the Technical University of Munich, June 14, 2004, accessed on March 2, 2017.
  5. ↑ Stefan Trinks: The master from Ganslberg. In: www.faz.net. June 26, 2018, accessed June 26, 2018 .
  6. ^ Board members of the German Association of Artists since 1951 . ( Memento from December 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Deutscher Künstlerbund eV, accessed on March 2, 2017.
  7. ↑ sueddeutsche.de: A downright delightful sight
  8. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 3, 2017 ( online )
  9. ↑ When the eyes of the Catholic world looked to Ruhstorf; Hans Nöbauer; Passauer Bistumsblatt 13/2017, p. 16
  10. ↑ TUM - Funeral speech for Professor Fritz Koenig (1924 - 2017). Retrieved January 7, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Koenig, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Würzburg , Bavaria , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH 22nd February 2017
Place of death Altdorf (Lower Bavaria) , Germany