Top 15 Fritz Wotruba Quotes

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

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

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

A good piece of art must combine barbarism and culture: two unique elements...

There are laws which the stone imposes upon us.

The material is destined, in the end, to remain a mere auxiliary, just good enough to enable stammering to become speech.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Every magnitude, every dimension, requires a new configuration.

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

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

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