Hans Josephsohn

Hans Josephsohn is one of the premier Swiss sculptors working today. For more than sixty years, he has sculpted numerous arresting figures and busts that capture the tensions of our age. Gerhard Mack brings Josephsohn s work to the wider world in this in-depth look at the artist and the impact of his sculpture.
Mack traces Josephsohn s evolution as an artist, charting his initial years and first successes as he broke onto the scene and carved out a place in twentieth-century art. He explores the power and complexity of Josephsohn s standing and reposing figures, reliefs, and busts, analyzing how Josephsohn employs space, volume, and light in his pieces. Georg Gisel s striking photographs capture the fragile plaster figures-in-progress standing in Josephsohn s studio, revealing them to be meditations on fate and the accidents of existence. An unprecedented study of an important, yet lesser-known, European sculptor, Hans Josephsohn will be invaluable to anyone interested in the development of contemporary and Swiss art.