Michael Schoenholtz

Michael Schoenholtz (1937* in Duisburg) is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Honoured with numerous awards, he taught for more than three decades at what is now the Berlin University of the Arts, where he also completed his studies in 1963 as a master student of Ludwig Gabriel Schrieber. Schoenholtz is a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 2008, the Michael Schoenholtz Archive was founded there, which continuously takes over the documents relating to his work and has also supported the publication of his catalogue raisonné.

From the very beginning, his works were orientated towards the human body, which he increasingly abstracted into block-like, architectural formations in the tradition of the figurative fragment, right up to the laconic presentation of mass and volume in space. At the same time, Schoenholtz’s work soon focussed on stone, a material whose brittle resistance suited his striving for a timeless artistic language. His works are figures reduced to the essentials, elementary gestural signs with a strong spatial impact. In their schematic angularity, they are characterised by a restrained but at the same time dignified aura that is influenced by Khmer and Aztec sculpture. Parallel to the sculptures, I developed a rich body of drawings that corresponded to them less in form than in content and in part anticipated the vocabulary of sculpture.

Michael Schoenholtz has created numerous works for public spaces, including several in Berlin. The bronze arch from 1986 on the site of the Alte Philharmonie in Bernburger Straße in Kreuzberg, which was destroyed in the war, is particularly well known. A six-part sculpture group was erected in 1982 in the Heinrich Zille housing estate in Moabit on Invalidenstraße. Other Berlin works can be found at the Wannsee lido, in Zehlendorf in front of the Onkel-Tom-Straße sports hall, in the Wedding housing estates on Bellermannstraße and Behmstraße and in Wilmersdorf on Durlacher Straße. His most recent outstanding projects include the artistic design of the crypt of the Frauenkirche in Dresden.

Here is an overview of the sculptures by Michael Schoenholtz in Berlin’s urban space: www.bildhauerei-in-berlin.de

Film in the Exhibition: ‘Studio visit’ (2008). Christina Czymay and Aaron Wendland as guests of Michael Schoenholtz. 11:29 min

Catalogue raisonné: The exhibition at the Georg-Kolbe-Museum is being organised to coincide with the publication of Michael Schoenholtz’s extensive catalogue raisonné, which has been published in a two-volume edition by Edition Braus. This has already been linked to exhibitions at the Municipal Museums in Heilbronn, the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum in Duisburg and the Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen.