Franz Metzner

Franz Metzner (November 18 1870, Wscherau, near Pilsen - March 24 1919, Berlin) was an influential German sculptor, particularly his sculptural figures integrated into the architecture of Central European public buildings in the Art Nouveau / Jugendstil / Vienna Secession period.

Biography

Metzer learned the craft of stone-cutting in Breslau with Christian Behrens and did various apprenticeships in Saxony through 1894. He founded his own studio in Berlin in 1896 and worked predominantly for the royal porcelain factory until 1903, and became a professor at the Vienna college of arts and sciences. Metzner achieved notoriety by winning a Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1900).

Among his important work are the sculptures for Josef Hoffmann's 1904-1911 landmark Art Deco Palais Stoclet in Brussels, including the very eccentric four green male nudes at the summit of the building. The Palais Stoclet is an example of "Gesamtkunstwerk", the integration of art and architecture, one of the goals of Jugendstil.

In 1910 Metzner met the vacationing Frank Lloyd Wright and, according to the scholarship of Anthony Alofsin, Metzer had a direct impact on Wright's "conventionalization" of the human figure and its incorporation into buildings like the Larkin Building and Midway Gardens. Around the same time, Metzner's designs influenced a number of Czech artists working in Prague, Stanislav Sucharda among them.

The sculptor's single most famous work is probably the 1913 Völkerschlachtdenkmal (People's Battle Monument), designed by the architect Bruno Schmitz in Leipzig. Metzner executed the powerful and strangely scaled interior figural-architectural sculpture in the "Hecker Tomb" with his teacher Behrens. The Monument was inaugurated in 1913 by Kaiser Wilhelm II and is associated with political strains of German nationalism in the period between the World Wars.

Much of Metzner's work in Germany was lost in World War II, and his highly individual style is difficult to classify.

Other work

* a series of atlantes for Jože Plečnik's 1905 Zacherl House in Vienna
* Tomb for the paper manufacturer Max Krause in the Jerusalem Cemetery in Berlin, 1907, Bruno Schmitz architect
* Der Rüdigerbrunnen (the Rudiger well) in the Bavarian city of Kaufbeuren