2477 - Hans Josephsohn

Hans Josephsohn 1920 Königsberg – 2012 Zurich Untitled. 1975 Brass relief, with black patina in places 3/6. Stamped with monogram and date on the lower left: JOS. 75. On the reverse, foundry mark and numbering: KUNST GIESSEREI ST. GALLEN 1065 Depth 23 cm, width 73 cm, height 110 cm In addition to the edition of six copies, two further artist’s proofs (AP) were produced. This work is registered in the Josephsohn Kesselhaus, St. Gallen, under catalog number: 1065. We thank Ulrich Meinherz for the kind information. Hans Josephsohn is one of the most significant sculptors in European art since 1945. Born into a Jewish family, he fled to Switzerland in 1938 and studied from 1939 to 1943 under the Swiss sculptor Otto Müller in Zurich. Over more than six decades, Josephsohn developed a consistently original body of sculptural work that, apart from changing art movements, focused on the human figure and its presence in space. It was not until his later career that his work gained broader international recognition. Today, the “Kesselhaus Josephsohn” in St. Gallen is dedicated to the preservation, documentation, and promotion of Hans Josephsohn’s artistic legacy. In close collaboration with the St. Gallen Art Foundry, it plays a central role in the care and presentation of his body of work. With its archaic-seeming formal language and textured surface, this brass relief immediately transports the viewer into Josephsohn’s sculptural world. From the dark surface, interspersed with earthy brown and ochre tones, three-dimensional forms emerge, coalescing into a suggested figurative composition. Human figures seem to grow out of the relief’s background, drawing closer to it and at the same time merging with it once more. Contours remain fragmentary; the boundaries of the bodies dissolve; figure and surrounding space become an inseparable unity. The work impressively demonstrates Josephsohn’s approach to the relief as a form situated between two-dimensional surface and free sculpture. Unlike a traditional relief, which renders its figures through clearly defined contours and an ordered spatial hierarchy, the composition unfolds through an interplay of densification, superimposition, and empty space. The bodies do not simply appear to be depicted on a surface, but seem to emerge from a mass. The eye feels its way across the irregular elevations and depressions, discovering individual body fragments and losing them again against the dark background. The treatment of the material is also characteristic here. Josephsohn worked primarily in plaster, which he modeled, carved while dry, and then added to again. The traces of this ongoing process of shaping—involving removal and addition—which were permanently transferred to the metal through casting, are deliberately left visible. The patina, dark in places, enhances the sense of depth in the surface and allows the sculptural elevations to stand out in shifting light. As a result, the material appears less as precious metal than as solidified matter shaped over a long period of time. The year 1975 marked an important phase in Josephson’s career: in addition to a solo exhibition dedicated to him at the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen, he participated in the “Kunstszene Zürich 1975” exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich. By this point, his exploration of human existence had already given rise to his distinctive formal language, in which physical presence and extensive abstraction do not appear as opposites but rather are mutually dependent. The figurative narrative and the autonomous sculptural structure do not allow for a single, unambiguous interpretation but derive their impact from the oscillation between the indeterminacy of the forms and the physical presence of the figure. With its relief-like composition, nuanced patina, and earth-toned metal, the work exemplifies Josephsohn’s distinctive conception of sculpture—as an ongoing process in which the human form emerges from the material while simultaneously remaining inscribed within it. It is precisely this that accounts for the enduring fascination of his work. Auction Date: November 27, 2026 Approximate Auction Time: 5:26 p.m. CET