This publication provides a long overdue German-language survey of sculpture between the years 1900 and 1945. Instead of recounting a »history of styles,« distinctive individual works are examined from diverse perspectives. What comes to light is that modernist sculpture did not follow in the path of trends set first in painting, as was the case in the 19th century, but rather played a key role itself in shaping new developments in art. In the age of nonfigurative art, the primal sculptural motif – the human figure – was by no means dissolved, but rather extended in manifold directions. Space was now incorporated as a component of sculptural works, ultimately becoming a theme in its own right in creations that took on a technological or architectural look. The pure object came to the fore as antagonist of both figure and abstraction.
In an extensive picture section, the catalog brings together 110 works by some 60 artists of this period, among them not only Auguste Rodin and Alberto Giacometti, but also Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Henri Laurens, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Kazimir Malevich, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Max Beckmann, Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz.

Editor: Siegmar Holsten, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
Authors: Andreas Franzke, Christa Lichtenstern, Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg, Kathrin Elvers-Svamberk, Siegmar Holsten, Stefanie Poley, Ursula Merkel

Hardcover
24 x 30,5 cm
400 pages
367 color and b/w ills.
German
out of print
ISBN 978-3-86828-104-0
49,80 Euro
2009