101 - Franz Dewald, Golden Tree, bronze sculpture, c. 1970

Franz Dewald, Golden Tree, bronze sculpture, c. 1970 Franz Dewald, 1911 Viernheim - 1990 Karlsruhe Grötzingen, German painter, sculptor and glass artist, who became known primarily in Baden-Württemberg for his glass art and wall installations in public spaces, shown here: *Golden Tree* with golden leaves, bronze sculpture with a golden patina, 26 x 31 cm, signed on the plinth. About the artist: Following a classical training in the craft of painting, Franz Dewald furthered his skills in 1938 in the mural painting class at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and transferred shortly afterwards to the State Art School in Karlsruhe. During the Second World War, he was stationed in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1944 as a technical draughtsman. After the war, Dewald moved to Grötzingen, where he took up residence in his own studio and home in 1950. His creative period from 1945 to the end of the 1950s, characterised by themes of landscape, figures and still lifes, reveals an intense engagement with the oeuvre of Paul Cézanne as well as the major artistic movements of the early 20th century: Cubism, Fauvism and German Expressionism. His turn towards abstraction in the early 1960s marked a new creative phase. Dewald’s works-colour and black-and-white paintings, as well as similar sculptures such as the one presented here-display a compositional structure characterised by geometry and stereometry, whilst simultaneously drawing on nature. Literature: Ute Hübner: Franz Dewald. The Pictorial Work with a Catalogue Raisonné, Münster 1999 (also: University Dissertation, Karlsruhe 1998); Franz Dewald. Nature and Abstraction, Städtische Galerie im Prinz-Max-Palais, Karlsruhe, published by the City of Karlsruhe - Städtische Galerie, Karlsruhe 1994.