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Alfred Hrdlicka (Vienna 1928-2009 Vienna) is one of the most important Austrian sculptors and was also active as a draftsman, painter, graphic artist and writer. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Josef Dobrowsky and Albert Paris Gütersloh, and then sculpture in the class of Fritz Wotruba. Hrdlicka consistently adhered to a figurative-expressive style in his sculptures, paintings, and prints, making the human figure his central motif. His sculptures, paintings, drawings, and etchings reflect Hrdlicka's critical mindset and his interest in issues of world history. Historical events were dealt with unadorned in his work. They heightened his political awareness and directed his artistic focus to extreme psychological and physical states. Pain, violence, death and unequal power relations dominate his work, in which he depicted man with all his abysses. Yet Hrdlicka remained a perpetual humanist, once saying modestly, "I can't think of anything. I think of something." As a professor of sculpture, he taught at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, at the Universität der Künste Berlin and at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He is represented in the STRABAG Artcollection with many important sculptures and drawings.
www.alfred-hrdlicka.com
