Hans Josephsohn

Throughout his career, Hans Josephsohn (1920 - 2012) sculpted the hu- man figure — a form which goes back millennia, hinting at a primal need. In various guises and poses, representational as much of the human con- dition as of the human body, Josephsohn’s work is both timeless and vital.

This exhibition brings together works spanning fifty years from the 1950s to the 1990s. All sculpted from live models within the artist’s intimate cir- cle, the figures inhabit the space standing, reclining, as busts, or interact- ing in wall reliefs. Josephsohn took inspiration from Medieval art, Romanesque churches and Indian temple reliefs, amongst others, drawn to the centrality of the human figure in the works. Translating the lived experience into sculpture, “to Josephsohn, human beings are bodies; everything is expressed in this body — thoughts and feeling, desires and anxieties, stories and expecta- tions”, Gerhard Mack explains.

Orphaned and displaced by the Second World War as a teenager, and then forced into labor camps as a Jewish immigrant in Switzerland, the experience of war has marked his oeuvre and his relationship to humanity. Beginning his career in the late 1930s, Josephsohn spent decades in his studio trying to comprehend the core of a person, of an individual outside of the collective, which could be swayed so drastically. Josephsohn lived through his expressive sculpture, and those he sculpted.

“All the crises in life, all of the adventures... I went through all of that in my studio” he says. Living in exile, Josephsohn comments, “sculpture became my home coun- try. Sculptors across history were my true relatives.” In his sculpture, he finds a neutral plane in which the body is stripped bare of any political af- filiations, becoming anti-monuments to the fascist era and monuments to the humanity of individual existence, as expressed through the physicality of the body, celebrating love and life.