Angel

Details

Provenance:

Heaven. Silent Auction for Artangel’s International Fund, London 7 June 2003, lot 3;

Private collection, Great Britain.

Description

– Particularly attractive version of the characteristic ‘man with black trousers’

– Virtuosic figure carved from a single block

– Subtle posture that poetically echoes an angelic theme

– Stephan Balkenhol is one of the most sought-after contemporary sculptors in Germany

The “Angel” is a particularly charming version of the man in black trousers and a white shirt, who is one of Stephan Balkenhol’s best-known and most sought-after motifs. Still, distant and at rest, the “angel” stands on a glazed plinth, which is part of the artwork.

As early as the beginning of the 1980s, Balkenhol began to reinterpret the human figure as a central theme, thus reclaiming it for sculpture in Germany. Unimpressed by the dogma of abstraction, Balkenhol cut people out of woodblocks, which became the archetypes of his art. Using traditional tools such as gouges, carving knives or clappers, he quickly carves his figures out of whole blocks of wood and then colours them. Despite their rough surface, they are of overwhelming precision and expressiveness.