1952/1972. bronze, dark patinated. Edition Euro Art, Vienna. Signed 'F. WOTRUBA', numbered copy 'XXXIII'/1000, cast in the foundry Pöll. H. 21 x w. 19 x d. 13 cm. - 'With the end of the forties Wotruba forms the great simple gestures of striding, lying, squatting. These figures radiate a strange suggestion on the viewer. Despite their blockiness, they seem to be animated from within. The purity and austerity, the renunciation of romantic pathos, but not of the pathos of a newly experienced archaism, excites us just as much as the abrupt distance they assume from the living viewer' (Special exhibition Fritz Wotruba, Ossiach 1972, p. 4). - Provenance: Wolfgang Brudermüller Collection; since then by inheritance. - Austrian sculptor. W. studied 1926-29 under A. Hanak a. E. Steinhof at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums in Vienna. Molested by the Austrian fascists he emigrated to Switzerland in 1934. After WW II he developed into one of the most important sculptor of the time. Lit.: Thieme-Becker, Vollmer.