bavarikon4UDescription
There are three themes that accompany Fritz Koenig (1924-2017) throughout his life: encounters between couples, death and transience, as well as the life theme of the horse, also formulated with great gesture within the other two subject groups. Koenig was a passionate horseman and built a world-famous Arabian stud farm on his estate. Similar to Picasso's bull, the horse acts as a narrative symbol of wild, impetuous, instinctive aesthetics in Fritz Koenig's work. In the work "Horse Jump" the central and for the breeder decisive moment of mating is captured as a snapshot. The amalgamation of artistic creativity and the activity of intervening in the creature coming into being of this creature as a breeder brought Fritz Koenig into the mental proximity of the Renaissance period's ideas. One strove to imitate divine creative power and beauty in the admiring contemplation of the all-encompassing creation of a higher being. In this sense, Koenig says about his Arab thoroughbreds: "There is nothing more beautiful [...]. The horses that come from my workshop are often not beautiful in this sense, are comparatively unshapely.[...] You see those beautifully shaped ears on that grey stallion? My workshop horses often have no ears at all." (Original quotation F.K., Ganslberg on 06.11.1978, from: Fritz Koenig, Meine Arche Noah, published by the Skulpturenmuseum im Hofberg, City of Landshut, Landshut 2004, p. 30.)
Author
Stephanie Gilles M.A.