Katharina Fritsch

Celebrated as one of the most innovative sculptors of our time, Katharina Fritsch mines the history, myths, and fairy tales of Germany as well as her own thoughts and dreams to explore the nature of human perception and experience. She draws her subjects from everyday life—household objects, common insects and animals, body parts—and alters them through unexpected shifts in scale and color, creating objects that blur the boundaries between the ordinary and the deeply symbolic. Her work has taken many forms, including large-scale public sculpture, intimate sound pieces, and multiples—artist-designed objects produced in limited or unlimited editions. Whatever the format, Fritsch’s works speak to the ways in which images can plumb our deep-seated desires, memories, dreams, and nightmares. 

Education, Early work, Madonna Figure 

Born in Essen, West Germany, Fritsch studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1977 to 1981. Although she was admitted to the program as a painter, she soon began exploring sculpture, making miniature versions of architectural structures and household objects familiar from her childhood. In 1982, she created Madonnenfigur (Madonna Figure), a multiple based on a figurine commemorating the miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France, in 1858. Cast by hand in plaster and painted a matte finish of garish, fluorescent yellow, Fritsch’s version becomes banal, even cartoonish. Because she designated it an unlimited edition, the number of copies that could exist is theoretically infinite, erasing the line between fine art and souvenir object. Five years later, Fritsch reimagined the work as a monument, creating a large-scale version for temporary display in a public square in Münster. The devotional object has been an ongoing interest for Fritsch, who has also made multiples based on statuettes of St. Catherine, St. Nicholas, and a pair of praying hands.

Sculptures and Installations, Child with Poodles, Man and Mouse, Hahn/Cock

Fritsch often enlarges her multiples or combines them in groups to make large-scale installations with ambiguous narrative overtones. Kind mit Pudeln (Child with Poodles) (1995–1996) comprises 128 examples of the multiple Poodle, arranged in dense circle around the figure of a naked infant. In Mann und Maus (Man and Mouse) (1991–1992), a gigantic version of her multiple Mouse sits on the chest of a sleeping man. Are these animals guarding the vulnerable human beings or threatening them? As in many of Fritsch’s works, many answers are possible.

Hahn/Cock (2013/2017) is one of Fritsch’s largest artworks to be housed in a public US museum collection. Towering nearly 25 feet over the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in the north end of the park, the strutting blue rooster atop its artist-designed pedestal is at once lifelike and completely unreal. The rooster can be a symbol of pride, power, and courage or posturing and macho prowess. Fritsch has admitted that she enjoys “games with language,” and the sculpture’s tongue-in-cheek title knowingly plays on its double meaning. Blurring the boundaries between the ordinary and the deeply symbolic, Hahn/Cock presents an unexpected take on the idea of a traditional public monument. 

Recognition

Fritsch has had solo exhibitions at major museums in San Francisco, Basel, Zürich, Chicago, London, New York, and Düsseldorf. In 1995, she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale.