Hans Josephsohn
23 Feb - 14 Apr 2013
HANS JOSEPHSOHN
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23 February - 14 April 2013
have spent sixty years, day after day working away calmly in my studio. I have simply followed my imagination... all the crises, the human ones that occur in life, and all the possible adventures and all the paths through the woods where you don’t know how you will get out again, they have all taken place in my studio. Hans Josephsohn
Modern Art Oxford presents a major solo exhibition by the late Swiss sculptor Hans Josephson.
Josephson’s powerful and imposing bronze reclining nudes, ‘semi-figures’ and abstract relief panels reveal a sensitive and dedicated examination of figure, form and plane.
This extensive exhibition includes many works seen in the UK for the first time and focuses on works created in the last 25 years of his life.
Josephsohn employed plaster and lost-wax bronze casting to create a body of sculptural forms that emerge through his careful and intuitive manipulation of materials.
Sharing affinities with the work of modernists such as Alberto Giacometti, the sculptures are also reminiscent of Medieval friezes, ancient Egyptian art and the totemic sculpture of the Easter Island Moai figures.
Related exhibition talk
Find out more about the artist here as well as a recent Independent review
About the artist
Josephsohn was born in Kaliningrad, East Prussia, in 1920 and died in 2012, aged 92. Born into a Jewish family, he fled to Italy at the age of 18 to avoid persecution in Nazi Germany. He went on to study sculpture at the Academy of Art in Florence. Following the rise of Fascism in Italy in 1939, he emigrated to Zurich where he quietly spent the rest of his life creating work.
This exhibition has been produced in collaboration with Kesselhaus Josephsohn, St Gallen, Switzerland; an exhibition complex near the foundry that, for the last 20 years, has cast Josephsohn's work.
This exhibition is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation Hauser & Wirth, London
ShareThis
23 February - 14 April 2013
have spent sixty years, day after day working away calmly in my studio. I have simply followed my imagination... all the crises, the human ones that occur in life, and all the possible adventures and all the paths through the woods where you don’t know how you will get out again, they have all taken place in my studio. Hans Josephsohn
Modern Art Oxford presents a major solo exhibition by the late Swiss sculptor Hans Josephson.
Josephson’s powerful and imposing bronze reclining nudes, ‘semi-figures’ and abstract relief panels reveal a sensitive and dedicated examination of figure, form and plane.
This extensive exhibition includes many works seen in the UK for the first time and focuses on works created in the last 25 years of his life.
Josephsohn employed plaster and lost-wax bronze casting to create a body of sculptural forms that emerge through his careful and intuitive manipulation of materials.
Sharing affinities with the work of modernists such as Alberto Giacometti, the sculptures are also reminiscent of Medieval friezes, ancient Egyptian art and the totemic sculpture of the Easter Island Moai figures.
Related exhibition talk
Find out more about the artist here as well as a recent Independent review
About the artist
Josephsohn was born in Kaliningrad, East Prussia, in 1920 and died in 2012, aged 92. Born into a Jewish family, he fled to Italy at the age of 18 to avoid persecution in Nazi Germany. He went on to study sculpture at the Academy of Art in Florence. Following the rise of Fascism in Italy in 1939, he emigrated to Zurich where he quietly spent the rest of his life creating work.
This exhibition has been produced in collaboration with Kesselhaus Josephsohn, St Gallen, Switzerland; an exhibition complex near the foundry that, for the last 20 years, has cast Josephsohn's work.
This exhibition is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation Hauser & Wirth, London