Fritz Koenig - Sculptor, Collector, Founder

Who was Fritz Koenig?
June 20, 1924 - February 22, 2017

Fritz Koenig passed away on February 22, 2017 after a long, fulfilling life at his country estate Ganslberg. Born in Würzburg in 1924, Fritz Koenig's early war experience on the Eastern Front during the Second World War had a decisive influence on his life. Man in the fragility of his existence, in the field of tension between love, death and transience, became the leitmotif of his work.

As a master student of Anton Hiller at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, he quickly became one of the most important protagonists of German sculpture in the second half of the 20th century from the 1950s onwards.

International success followed, such as his participation in the XXIX Venice Biennale in 1958 and documenta II in Kassel in 1959. In the same year, Galerie Günther Franke in Munich presented Fritz Koenig's first solo exhibition. The first exhibition of his work in the USA took place in 1961 at the Staempfli Gallery in New York.

In 1964, he was appointed to the Chair of Plastic Design at the Faculty of Architecture at the Technical University of Munich.

His individual language of form leads him to worldwide fame, which is also reflected in his participation in numerous important international exhibitions and competitions.

The need to commemorate the victims of National Socialism led to poignant formulations such as the 'Pietà' for Maria Regina Martyrum in Berlin Plötzensee (1962) or the memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany in Mauthausen from 1981. With the monumental 'Klagebalken' from 1995, a memorial for the victims of the 1972 attack was created on the Munich Olympic site.

Koenig's most famous work, the 'Large Spherical Caryatid NY' for the plaza of the World Trade Center in New York, was created between 1968 and 1971. Damaged but not destroyed by the catastrophe of 9/11, it became a memorial to the victims of the attack.

Fritz Koenig is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art and the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The KOENIGmuseum is materialized testimony to Koenig's close connection to Landshut as 'his' city. In 1993, Maria and Fritz Koenig donated their entire estate, thus laying the foundation stone for the museum, which has housed and cared for the artist's work and collections since 1998.