20.11.2024 – 30.03.2025
With Mythos & Moderne, the Glyptothek celebrates the great German sculptor and draftsman Fritz Koenig (1924–2017) on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Working in close collaboration with the KOENIGmuseum and the city of Landshut, the Glyptothek presents a selection of large- and small-scale sculptures, drawings, and collages from different periods in Koenig’s oeuvre stretching from the late 1950s to the late 1990s.
In their abstract figurative conception and formal language, the works selected for the exhibition show Koenig’s indebtedness to both principles of classical modernism and pre-modern artistic traditions. They are indicative of his intense engagement with themes and figures from classical mythology (Icarus, Janus, Poseidon, centaurs), ancient architectural forms (caryatids), and pictorial motifs (biga, quadriga) that have inspired artists for millennia and encouraged them to break new ground with their own iconographic formulations and formal inventions.
Born in Würzburg in 1924 and raised in Landshut, Fritz Koenig was part of the first post-war class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1946. Here, he initially studied under Joseph Wackerle (1880–59), but then switched to the class of the more progressive Anton Hiller (1893–1985), with whom he eventually completed his studies as a masterclass student in 1952. When a travel fellowship from the Academy enabled the young Koenig to study abroad in Paris in 1951, the brief sojourn awakened in him a lifelong fascination with African sculpture and sparked his lasting admiration for its formal qualities. For the young artist, who, after the catastrophic experience of the Second World War, sought an artistic renewal of European figurative sculpture on formal grounds, it was thus no longer classical antiquity—the legacy of Greece and Rome—itself, but classical antiquity enriched by the non-classical legacy of Africa and Europe, which became a stimulating and fruitful source of inspiration for his own artistic creations.
By 1957, a fellowship at the Villa Massimo, allowed Koenig to visit Rome where he, inspired by archaic Etruscan small bronzes, discovered the motif of the biga and quadriga. He varied this many times and later translated it into the monumental. A year later, Koenig gained wider national and international recognition: He won the competition to exhibit in the German Pavilion at the World Exposition in Brussels and was invited to participate in the XXIX. Biennale in Venice. In the early and mid-1960s, he had solo exhibitions at the Staempfli Gallery in New York and was invited to participate in documenta III and the XXXII Venice Biennale. In 1967, Koenig received what is undoubtedly his most prominent international commission, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approached him to design a fountain sculpture to adorn the plaza between the giant Twin Towers of Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Center in New York (Great Caryatid Sphere N.Y., 1967–1972). Koenig was closely associated with the city of Munich through his appointment as Professor of Plastic Design at the Technical University (1964) and his work on the Board of Trustees of the State Collections of Antiquities and the Glyptothek (since 1979).
The exhibition was conceived and realised in collaboration with Dr. Alexandra von Arnim (until recently director of the KOENIGmuseum Landshut) and Prof. Dr. Holger A. Klein (Columbia University, New York).
Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a → catalogue with a foreword by Florian Knauß, Director of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek in Munich, and an essay by Prof. Holger Klein.
The images provided here may be used in the context of editorial reporting on the Staatliche Antikensammlungen and the Glyptothek with reference to the exhibition "Mythos & Moderne. Fritz Koenig und die Antike" may be used free of charge, provided the source is cited as ©Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek. Use for commercial purposes is not permitted.
