(Vienna 1907–1975)
“Große Stehende”, 1942, limestone, 173 x 80 x 56.5 cm, Jürg Janett, Fritz Wotruba Werkverzeichnis: Skulpturen, Reliefs, Bühnen- und Architekturmodelle, Erker-Verlag St. Gallen, 2002, catalogue raisonné no. 103, with ill.

Illustrated:
Jean-R. de Salis, Fritz Wotruba, Editions Graphis, Amstutz & Herdag, Zurich 1948; cover ill. (head of the sculpture), ill. 13 and ill. 14-head of the sculpture (both full page), p. 17, ill.
“Das Atelier in Zug” with “Große Stehende”; Fritz Wotruba, Humanität aus dem Stein, von Friedrich Heer, Aus persönlichen Aufzeichnungen von Fritz Wotruba, Editions du Griffon, Neuchatel-Schweiz,1961, ill. 8 (full-page); Fritz Wotruba, Schriften zum Werk, Otto Breicha, Europa Verlag Vienna, 1967, ill. “Atelier in Zug” with “Große Stehende”; Fritz Wotruba, Figur als Widerstand, Bilder und Schriften zu Leben und Werk, published by Otto Breicha, catalogue to Wotruba exhibition Akademie der bildenden Künste Vienna/ Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession, Verlag Galerie Welz Salzburg, 1977, p. 11-ill.
“Das Atelier in Zug, Schweiz” with “Große Stehende”.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Switzerland-directly from the artist
Im Kinsky Vienna, 22 June 2010, lot 374
Private Collection, Linz

Fritz Wotruba
The sculptor’s material

Stone is the sculptor’s material. Its eternal elements, developed over millennia and subject to numerous transformations, necessarily lead to concentration and authenticity. Stone enables us to approach the realisation of an art that places law, mass and harmony above other characteristics. Of course, it is also possible for stone to be violated: ultimately there is nothing that can permanently resist being penetrated by human will. As a result, this material should only be worked on by someone who can muster the power to include within his concept of form the spatial limits to which he is subject.
There is no formula for handling stone, but there is a principle: directness in dealing with ideas and form. As part of this way of working, the desire for the absolute must be suppressed for a long period of time. This is because the absolute and the orthodox require reduction and asceticism, possibly as the last means by which to allow art to thrive.
Stone has remained a mystery to me: I know that, despite its hardness, rigidity, dryness, all these brutal characteristics that are hard to bend to one’s will, it contains thousands of form-worlds. No material and no creative desire, no matter how unerring and precise, are able to replace spirit and genius. Ultimately it is the purpose of the material to remain a subordinated resource: good enough to help the stammering individual speak clearly. Only in the hands of a god can even soil become animate form. The purpose of directly carving into stone is to oblige the idea of the image to take on clarity and simplicity as a result of self-inflicted limitation and constriction. I also believe in the laws that stone imposes on us: the person who breaks these laws places more than a purely aesthetic term at risk. Anyone who pierces through stone destroys the purpose of the image that lives in stone. The hole in the block of a shape is generally nothing other than an expression of weakness and helplessness.
Stone’s power and might is its bulk, its weight and its density.
From the mentioned literature: Fritz Wotruba, Schriften zum Werk