Fritz Wotruba worn born in Vienna in 1907 and started to study engraving at 14. It was only in 1925 that he decided to become a sculptor studying in the studio of Anton Hanak.
Wotruba worked alone from 1929 while Josef Hoffmann, the founder of the Wiener Werksttte, showed a great interest in his works.
He was then considered as a talented technician and took part in many exhibitions, notably in 1929 in Paris where his Male Torso much impressed Maillol who found it hard to believe that such work had been produced by a 22-year-old artist.
His Crouching Man of 1931, now in the Museum of Vienna, contributed to establish his fame. He showed his works in 1931 in Essen an in Zurich and then in Basel in 1942 and in Bern in 1943.
Following the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Wotruba sought refuge in Switzerland and lived in Basel and in Bern. The sculptures he produced during his Swiss exile marked a return to some archaic precision in a Roman style.
Back in Vienna in 1945, he was elected as member of the Academy of Fine Arts and took part in several major international exhibitions, notably in Venice in 1945 and in 1950, in Paris from 1953, in Kassel in 1959 and 1964. He also exhibited his works at the Museum of Modern Art of Paris in 1945 the year he decided to start again from zero however keeping the theme of the human body and organising volumes for themselves in order to keep the essence of the stone material in what he called the human cathedrals such as the Feminine Rock from 1947-48 now in the Middelheim Park Museum of Antwerp or the big reclining form of 1951.
Balancing between figurative and abstract art Wotruba produced rigid or soft cylindric forms before adopting a more rigorous constructive style. Several of his works can be seen in various squares and cemeteries of Vienna. He died in 1975.
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