222 - HANS STEINBRENNER

HANS STEINBRENNER (1928 Frankfurt am Main – 2008 ibid.) Composition, 1958 Red sandstone. 55 x 50 x 56 cm. Scattered cracks. Two small chips on the upper edge. WVZ 122 Provenance: Formerly the Katharina Apel Collection, now a private collection in Hesse. Hans Steinbrenner is one of the best-known sculptors of postwar West German modernism. His work evolves through clearly distinct phases, from the figurative works of the late 1940s, through the biomorphic forms of the 1950s, to the geometrically structured rectangular sculptures and stelae for which he later became known. “Composition” is a rounded block of red sandstone from which several bulbous ridges emerge—spherical formations, undulating curves, deep hollows, and a penetrating opening in the center. Across the surface, the light-colored strata of the material run in concentric arcs, like inscribed traces of a time that can no longer be dated. Here, the stone loses its familiar heaviness. It becomes an elliptical, teardrop-shaped mass that is more reminiscent of solidified lava or wax that has paused in its flow—a material that still seems to carry its own origin within itself. The concept of stone as something solid and definitive is thus called into question: What lies before us here appears less shaped than grown, less a work of art than a deposit. Thus, the gaze upon the object becomes a gaze upon something timeless—upon the origins of the universe, upon the slow emergence of life itself. The layers in the stone tell of millennia that defy human measure. And in this geological process, which began long before us and will continue long after us, we humans are merely fleeting eyewitnesses.