Fritz Wotruba

Fritz Wotruba (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna) was an Austrian sculptor of Czecho-Hungarian descent. He was considered one of the most notable sculptors of the 20th century in Austria. In his work, he increasingly dissolves figurative components in favor of geometrical abstraction with the shape of the cube as the basic form.

Fritz Wotruba was born in 1907 as the youngest of eight children of Adolf Wotruba (who came from Bohemia to work as a tailor's assistant) and Maria Wotruba, née Kocsi (from Hungary, working as a maid), in Vienna. Adolf was an alcoholic and violent, often beating his sons and his wife - as described in the auto-biography of Elias Canetti, Das Augenspiel, who befriended him in 1933, writing a very positive assessment of his work in 1954. His eldest brother was imprisoned for armed robbery and murder, and died in prison at Stein on the Danube. Fritz, the youngest, was spared from his father's wrath but was kept under close surveillance by the Police due to the Police records of his three elder brothers, and Canetti believed that his fascination with sculpting in stone was a form of psychological defence against his traumatic childhood.

From 1921 to 1925, he was trained as an engraver, as an apprentice in the engraving and die cutting workshop of Josef Schantin in Vienna.

From February to summer 1926, he attended the arts and trades school of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry and open evening courses on nude drawing.

In fall 1926, he enrolled in studies in sculpting at the arts and trades school.

Through the end of his studies, he was a student of Anton Hanak, and received a stipend by the Vienna Society of Modern Art, the Austrian Chamber of Labor and the municipality of Vienna - which was obtained for him by the ministrations of Anna Mahler, who was his pupil and lover.

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