Franz Bernhard
12 Sep - 09 Nov 2014
Drawings and Sculptures
“As a human, I am interested in humans. As a sculptor, I am interested in the image of the human.” Franz Bernhard attracted attention throughout Germany with his powerful, monumental sculpture “Große Mannheimerin” at the highway access road to Mannheim, the City of Squares. In 2014, the prominent artist from Southwest Germany would have turned 80. The Kunsthalle Mannheim dedicates an anniversary exhibition to him, which features around 30 drawings as well as selected sculptures that bear witness to Bernhard’s major artistic theme: humans as signs in space.
In his drawings and sculptures, Bernhard plays with abstract forms that are only faintly reminiscent of the human figure. Reworked numerous times, the sculptures made of iron and wood appear as signs in space. They are not depictions, but allegories of bodily postures such as standing, lying, toppling. An abstract detail often refers to the whole. For Bernhard, the sheet of paper also functioned as material that he integrated in the effect of the artwork, treating the surfaces of his drawings with sandpaper and spatulas. What all his pieces have in common is the relentless physical work performed on them. In cooperation with the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the last large sculptures created shortly before his unexpected death in 2013 will be presented in the Skulpturenpark Heidelberg. Franz Bernhard was born in former Czechoslovakia, from where he was expelled in 1946. From 1959 to 1966 he studied sculpture under Wilhelm Loth and Fritz Klemm at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe and was exhibited in 1977 at the documenta 6 in Kassel. Bernhard was a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin from 1990 to 1992. In 1998, he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and was awarded an Honorary Professorship of the State of Baden-Württemberg in 2004. A multivolume catalogue raisonné of his drawings will be released concurrently with the exhibition.
“As a human, I am interested in humans. As a sculptor, I am interested in the image of the human.” Franz Bernhard attracted attention throughout Germany with his powerful, monumental sculpture “Große Mannheimerin” at the highway access road to Mannheim, the City of Squares. In 2014, the prominent artist from Southwest Germany would have turned 80. The Kunsthalle Mannheim dedicates an anniversary exhibition to him, which features around 30 drawings as well as selected sculptures that bear witness to Bernhard’s major artistic theme: humans as signs in space.
In his drawings and sculptures, Bernhard plays with abstract forms that are only faintly reminiscent of the human figure. Reworked numerous times, the sculptures made of iron and wood appear as signs in space. They are not depictions, but allegories of bodily postures such as standing, lying, toppling. An abstract detail often refers to the whole. For Bernhard, the sheet of paper also functioned as material that he integrated in the effect of the artwork, treating the surfaces of his drawings with sandpaper and spatulas. What all his pieces have in common is the relentless physical work performed on them. In cooperation with the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the last large sculptures created shortly before his unexpected death in 2013 will be presented in the Skulpturenpark Heidelberg. Franz Bernhard was born in former Czechoslovakia, from where he was expelled in 1946. From 1959 to 1966 he studied sculpture under Wilhelm Loth and Fritz Klemm at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe and was exhibited in 1977 at the documenta 6 in Kassel. Bernhard was a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin from 1990 to 1992. In 1998, he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and was awarded an Honorary Professorship of the State of Baden-Württemberg in 2004. A multivolume catalogue raisonné of his drawings will be released concurrently with the exhibition.