(Vienna 1907–1975) ‘Figurenfries’, 1973, in 4 parts, bronze, golden and copper-coloured patina (different patina to each part, part 1: 48 x 107 cm, depth c. 7 cm / part 2: 46.5 x 40.5 cm, depth c. 6 cm / part 3: 47.5 x 49 cm, depth c. 7 cm / part 4: 46.5 x 107.5 cm, depth c. 7 cm, (K)

Jürg Janett, Fritz Wotruba, Werkverzeichnis, Skulpturen, Reliefs, Bühnen- und Architekturmodelle, publisher Erker, St. Gallen 2002, page 197, no. 186 - with a note: editions of all 4 Teile in bronze. The cast book says nothing about the number in each edition. - There are evidently more holes in the bronze casts than in the plaster models.

Provenance:
Family Ownership, Vienna - direct from the artist

Elias Canetti AS IT IS THERE
It is an old and indestructible notion, that a sculptor is there at the beginning. Anyone who speaks of the creator, first of all thinks about figural forms in space. No other art has retained the appearance of the origin to such an extent. Ancient depictions of the rapid creation of man by means of the activity of hands placed above may have lost their authority for many: the radiance that plays around the intent, lonely figure of the sculptor, borrowed from the gods themselves, has survived this. Anyone who stands amongst the works of Fritz Wotruba, will sense that this radiance, despite all threatening prophecy, will not be extinguished so quickly.
The main concern for sculpture is the beginning. It is not as easy as it once was. An unendingly long history has placed itself between us and the beginning, and new, tangible remains are being brought to light on a daily basis as testimony of this. The beginning is located back at a time belonging to a very archaic, truculent and unskilled form of man. Another mining method has brought the origins to light in the life of individual humans. Powerful instincts, unswerving and undaunted, like those of an animal, are named for what they are and acknowledged. They are closer to the beginning than the excavations of archaeologists. On another completely different, third path, which ignores animalistic man, there are elemental visual forms, to which our minds make recourse, clarified, cleansed and relocated within their undoubtedly rightful places.
I consider the significance of Fritz Wotruba as being that he has confronted within himself all of these apparently separate beginnings, which we encounter today and recreates them as a new unity, without eschewing his legendary rights as creator. His works have the force of the archaic and the tension inherent in our most powerful instincts. Their forms are the elemental forms of Modernism. His subject is, however, still the figure. Everything is integral to it, everything that has arrived in the form of insight, prescience and fate. These are not the tradtional, emptied out figures with nothing to say from long dead periods. They are our form, the beginning, shown as it it were today. ...
from: Wotruba, Figur als Widerstand, Publisher Galerie Welz, Salzburg 1977