Hans Josephsohn valuation
Swiss sculptor of rough-hewn standing, seated and reclining figures in brass and bronze, made over six decades in Zurich.
Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012) was born into a Jewish family in Königsberg, East Prussia, went to Florence on a scholarship in 1937 to study art, and, being Jewish, had to leave Italy the following year, arriving in Zurich in 1938.
What a work by Hans Josephsohn is worth
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Bio
Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012) was born into a Jewish family in Königsberg, East Prussia, went to Florence on a scholarship in 1937 to study art, and, being Jewish, had to leave Italy the following year, arriving in Zurich in 1938. There he studied with the sculptor Otto Müller and in 1943 took the studio where he worked for the rest of his life; he became a Swiss citizen in 1964. For six decades he made the human figure, standing, seated and lying, in full and half length, in heads and in reliefs, modelled in plaster from the model and then cast in brass or bronze. The early figures are upright and stele-like; from the 1980s they grow into heavy, abstracted volumes whose rough surfaces carry the marks of his hands. He was little known outside Switzerland until the late 1990s, when museums abroad began to take him up, and his reputation has grown steadily since.
His works are cast at the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, the foundry next to the Kesselhaus Josephsohn, which holds and shows his work, and the date of a cast, in his lifetime or after it, and its number are the questions a buyer asks first. The rough surfaces and patina are part of the work, so cleaning or repatination changes it. The estate is represented by Galerie Felix Lehner, Galerie Max Hetzler and Thaddaeus Ropac.
At a glance
- Born
- 20 May 1920, Königsberg
- Died
- 20 August 2012, Zurich
- Movement
- Abstract art
More on Wikipedia.
Königsberg, Zurich and La Congiunta
La Congiunta, a concrete building by the architect Peter Märkli in the Ticino, opened in 1992 to house his reliefs and figures permanently, and the Kesselhaus Josephsohn in St. Gallen followed in 2003.
The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam gave him a large exhibition in 2002 and the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt in 2008. A retrospective selected by the painter Albert Oehlen opened at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in 2024.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
