Fritz Wotruba Quotes

I dream of a sculpture in which landscape, architecture and city are one. It might be a city like Marseille, a city steaming with heat which suddenly transmogrifies. I becomes an immense piece of sculpture, a gigantic figure, made up of white blocks and segmented by flat, horizontal terraces, arranged in a bare and motionless landscape. (circa 1969)

Solidity, rigidity, what did not yield to the pressure of the hand attracted me.

What nevertheless subsists is the desire of an absolute ideal form, a form which can adapt itself to any setting and to any scale.

The search continues for the absolute model-form which shall do justice to every dimension without loss of inner force.

The power and force of stone reside in its mass, its weight, and its density.

Measures, weights, proportions move and change in expression and meaning.

My desire to work is not stimulated by the classical proportions of Greek architecture, but by functional silos and hangars.. .The confusion of places, cluttered with art and culture chokes my inspiration. What stimulates and interests me is the natural noise of a busy city, and the practical lay-out of a harbor or factory which has come into being without consideration of any aesthetic principles.

The hardness and immobility of material gave me more satisfaction tan true-to-life representations.

The sudden change [Wotruba and his wife returned to Vienna in December 1945, at the end of the war; there he started to direct a class for advanced students on the Akademie der Bildenden Künste of Vienna] has had a shock effect on me and on my work. The almost sensual excitement caused by the destruction around me wears off rather quickly. It is not my duty to give this past [of Nazism and the war-years, fh] more significance than it has already been given in literature, on the stage and in the cinema. I am concerned with the figure, with the statuary, i.e., with statics, measurement, equilibrium, and with unity.

I am concerned with the figure.. .Equilibrium, unity.

Further working along the lines of experiments of 1954 [toward rounded forms and columnar figures], I executed the 'Figure with upraised arms' as the crucifix for a Parish church in Salzburg.

Stone is the only true material for the sculptor. All others, tin, iron bars, tin cans and coiled springs are merely poor substitutes

Culture can flourish only under the protection of a society with aristocratic characteristics.

Our existence has a hectic quality. It is as though mobilization [circa 1937, the pre-war years in his country Austria] were imminent. Each one of us is suffering; we are all constantly worried as to how we are going through the next day. In spite of all this, we [Wotruba and his wife] have an unquenchable lust for life.

Only a distinctive individual can produce great art. Great art is synonymous with anonymous art.