Hans Josephsohn

Hans Josephsohn (May 1920 - 20 August 2012) was a Swiss sculptor. He lived and worked in Zurich.

Josephsohn was born in Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad), East Prussia. Here he attended elementary school and completed high school in 1937. That same year, he left his homeland and moved to Florence with a small scholarship, in order to study art. Due to his Jewish ancestry, he had to leave Italy a short time later and fled to Switzerland. He arrived in Zurich in 1938 and became a student of the sculptor Otto Müller. In 1943 Josephsohn moved into his first atelier, and starting in 1964 began showing his works in various solo shows within Switzerland. He acquired Swiss citizenship in 1964. Josephsohn's works began to attract the attention of a larger audience at the end of the 1990s. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam dedicated a large solo exhibition to the artist in 2002. In 2003 Josephson received the art prize of Zurich. Various group and solo exhibitions followed this, among others in the Diözesanmuseum Kolumba in Cologne (2005) and in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2007). In 2008, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt/Main organized a large solo exhibition of Josephsohn's works. In the years since 2000, Josephsohn's work has increasingly been regarded, also internationally, as a significant contribution to visual art.

Permanent installations of Hans Josephsohn's works can be seen at the museum La Congiunta in Tessin, Switzerland, which was built by Peter Märkli and Stefan Bellwalder and opened in 1992. In 2003 the Kesselhaus Josephsohn in St. Gallen, Switzerland, opened, where a regularly alternating selection of works is presented. At the same time, the Kesselhaus is functioning as a storage and archive for Josephsohn's works and it is located next to the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen where Hans Josephsohn's works are cast.

Hans Josephsohn is represented by the Galerie Felix Lehner and Hauser & Wirth.

Josephsohn's sculptures focused on the human figure as a volume in space. From the beginning of his career he worked, from the model, on sculpture's most timeless, constant themes: Representations of the human figure, standing, sitting, reclining, working on portrait heads or half-figures, made in plaster, some then later, cast in bronze.

Josephsohn's figures are bereft of any portrait-like individualization. And they stand out for their simplicity, for their being limited to the simple postures of the human body. The wish for permanence plays a key role: "My figures must be enduring in their expression, in their stance", Josephsohn said, "A narrative gesture is out of the question". His works evoke prehistory, ancient stone steles and romanesque figures.

...
Wikipedia