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1935 Golling/Lower Austria - 2022 Vienna
- Title
- „Erhebung“ („Rising“)
- Time
- design 1986, execution 2013
- signed
- and dated "Oskar Höfinger 1986-2013"
- Material
- bronze, no. 7/7
- Height
- 41 in
Oskar Höfinger – one of Austria’s most significant contemporary sculptors – placed the human figure, the body as the center of a subjective universe, at the core of his impressive oeuvre. While his early work was characterized by highly fragmented surfaces, the so-called “crystalline forms,” his artistic production from around 1970 onward was defined by expansive stereometric structures incorporating large, voluminous forms.
The sculpture “Erhebung” (“Rising”) was designed by Oskar Höfinger in 1986 for one of his most important commissions: a series of monumental marble statues for the “Weißer Hof ” in Klosterneuburg/Lower Austria. In its present format and in bronze, “Erhebung” was first executed in 2013. The figure conveys the strong human will to rise through one’s own strength. With sharply articulated planes and a repeated triangular structure, it cuts through space while nevertheless maintaining a sense of internal coherence.
Oskar Höfinger is regarded as one of the most distinguished graduates of Fritz Wotruba’s master class. Over the course of his long and independent artistic career, Höfinger developed a highly distinctive visual language; a rich repertoire of autonomous motifs and forms that he continuously varied, expanded, and combined. His oeuvre remains a cohesive body of work, shaped by numerous commissions in public, private, and ecclesiastical contexts, and sustained by a profound affirmation of human existence.