3Anabase
Rolf Szymanski
1983, Iron
On the right side of the path, in front of the trees, stands a larger-than-life sculpture of iron. This is ”Anabasis”, a work by Rolf Szymanski, and it displays vaguely human proportions.
Szymanski was born in Leipzig in 1928. He studied sculpture first in Leipzig and later in West Berlin. He became a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1970 and served as its Vice President from 1983-86. From 1986-1997 he was its Director of the Department of Visual Arts, and Professor at the Conservatory of Arts from 1986-1995.
Rolf Szymanski is one of the defining figurative sculptors of the present day. His works have been exhibited extensively, including at the Berlinische Galerie and the Neue Nationalgalerie, both in Berlin, the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich and other cities. He participated in documenta III in Kassel in 1964 and in the Venice Biennale in 1990. He died in Berlin in 2013.
Szymanski‘s works revolve around the human being. As in many of his sculptures, ”Anabasis” deals with the female form. His modeling of the material and the application of layers of fragments create an overall form whose cracks, crusts and lumps give it an amorphous character, literally drawn by life, but still carrying the human image, the original figure.
Szymanski began with the representational but varied the form into abstraction. This can be understood as an allegory of the scientific study of the human body.
The sculpture was obtained for the sculpture park in 2000, with funds from the LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin.
