Fritz Koenig

Fritz Koenig, born June 20, 1924, in Würzburg, Germany, is a sculptor best known outside his native country for "The Sphere," which once stood in the plaza between the two World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan but which now stands, its damage deliberately left unrepaired, in Battery Park as a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. His long and distinguished career has included other works, including other memorials.

Biography

Born in Würzburg, his family moved to the Bavarian community of Landshut when he was six. In the years after World War II he studied art at the Kunstakademie München (Munich School of Art), graduating in 1952. Nine years later he moved to Ganslberg, a farming community outside Landshut where he lives and works on a horse farm. Since 1964 he has been a professor of art at the Technische Hochschule München.

Work

Koenig's work has largely consisted of figures or shapes assembled from simple geometric forms cast in metal. When he has represented human forms, these have been heavily stylized, with heads made of spheres and bodies and limbs of cylinders. His Holocaust memorial design exemplifies this, adding bones poured on a mound.

Major works

* "The Sphere", 1969-71
* German memorial at Mauthausen concentration camp, 1983
* Memorial to victims of the Munich Massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
* Permanent exhibits at the Hofberg Sculpture Museum in Landshut.

External links

* [http://www.landshut.de/skulpturenmuseum/ Landshut Sculpture Museum] (German)
* [http://www.landshut.info/haupt/Kultur/Skulpturenmuseum/body_skulpturenmuseum.htm Hours] of the Landshut Sculpture Museum (German)
* " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367938/ Koenig's Sphere] " at [http://www.imdb.com IMDb]