(Vienna 1907-1975) "Figurenfries", 1973, in 4 parts, bronze, gold/copper-coloured patina(each part has a different patina, part 1: 48 x 107 cm, depth ca. 7 cm/part 2: 46,5 x 40,5 cm, depth ca. 6 cm/part 3: 47,5 x 49 cm, depth ca. 7 cm/part 4: 46,5 x 107,5 cm, depth ca. 7 cm, (K)

Jürg Janett: Fritz Wotruba, catalogue raisonné, Skulpturen, Reliefs, Bühnen- and Architekturmodelle, Erker-Verlag, St. Gallen 2002, page 197, no. 186 – with note: series of bronze casts of all four parts. The cast book does not state the number of casts. – the bronze casts display significantly more holes than the plaster models.

Provenance: family ownership, Vienna - direct from the artist

It is an ancient and indestructible idea that the sculptor stands at the beginning. He who speaks of the Creator thinks first of the forms of creatures in space. No other artform has so preserved the status of the origin. The ancient views of the hurried creation of man by the activity of superior hands may have lost their immediacy for many: the lustre that surrounds the resolute and lonely figure of the sculptor, borrowed from the gods themselves, has survived this. He who stands under the works of Fritz Wotruba feels that this gloss will not soon be lost, notwithstanding all threatening prophecies. The main concern of sculpture is the beginning. It is no longer as easy as it once was. An infinitely long history has come between us and the beginning, and new tangible remains which testify to it are brought to light every day. The beginning has been moved back to the time of a very archaic, unfortunate and unskilled mankind. Another method of advancement has revealed the aboriginal in individual living men. Powerful instincts, unswerving and unbroken as in an animal, are called by their names and acknowledged. They are closer to the beginning than the excavations of archaeologists. In an absolutely different, third, way which separates men from animals, the elementary visual forms which feed our spirit are made clear, cleansed and employed in their undoubted rights. I regard the significance of Fritz Wotruba as being that he faced up to and formed into a new unity all these apparently separate beginnings which we come across today without renouncing his legendary rights as a creator. His works possess the impact of the archaic and the tension of our strongest instincts. Their forms are the elementary ones of the modern. His subject matter however is still always form. It embraces everything which comes together into insight, intuition and fate. It is not the traditional, emptied out and meaningless form of the dead past. It is our form, the beginning as if it were today
Elias Canetti
... from: Wotruba, Figur als Widerstand, Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg 1977