CRAGG, TONY
1949 Liverpool

Title: Broken Landscape.
Date: 2020.
Technique: Bronze, green patinated.
Measurement: 48.5 x 27 x 19.5 .
Notation: Signed On the lower edge on the inside: Cragg.
Foundry mark: Next to it the signet of the Gerhard Lauster foundry, Solingen.
Base: On Plinth. On base (92 x 43 x 36 cm; Total height: 140.5cm).


The work is from an edition of 8 copies + 2 E.A.s.



Provenance:
- - Galerie am Dom, Wetzlar

- Private Collection Hessen (aquired in 2021 from the previous owner)



- A timelessly beautiful bronze sculpture by an internationally renowned artist, designed to retain its value

- A distinctive design language with great visual impact and high recognition value

- A distinctive piece in the ideal size for living spaces and galleries



Stages of a Life

Relentless experimental curiosity, a rich formal vocabulary, and an impressive range of materials and sculptural techniques characterize the work of Tony Cragg. The British-German artist—widely acclaimed and internationally celebrated—is regarded as one of the most important sculptors of the present day.

His life journey led him from his birthplace of Liverpool to Waltham Abbey, where he worked from 1966 to 1968 as a laboratory technician at the National Rubber Producers Research Association, before moving to London. There, he studied at the Wimbledon School of Art from 1970 to 1973 and subsequently at the Royal College of Art from 1973 to 1977. In 1976, he accepted a professorship at the École des Beaux-Arts in Metz, before relocating to Wuppertal in 1977, where he continues to live and work today. As a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf—whose rector he served as from 2009 to 2013—as well as at the Berlin University of the Arts, Cragg shaped subsequent generations of artists. Through the sculpture park he initiated, Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, he also created an outstanding venue for contemporary sculpture.



Landscape Imagination in Living Rhythm

The bronze sculpture from 2020 unfolds an elegant dynamism: two slender, ascending columns enter into a dialogue, developing a powerful, interrelated movement through space. Layered segments, alternating between swelling and constricted forms, generate a vibrant rhythm and the impression of continuous transformation.

With the title Broken Landscapes, Cragg opens a broad and evocative field of associations for the viewer. From a distance, the layered and displaced forms may recall geological formations, tectonic shifts, or continuous processes of growth, while the green patina immediately evokes associations with landscape and nature.



Material Aesthetics and Artistic Understanding

Cragg, who experimented in his early work with found objects and industrial waste, attributes great significance to material as the point of departure for the artistic process. In bronze, he turns to perhaps the most tradition-rich material in sculpture, one that has been valued for centuries for its durability, technical mastery, and particular aesthetic dignity. Few materials have shaped the history of sculpture so profoundly.

“There was a time,” Tony Cragg remarked in an interview, “when the goal was simply to find new materials. That is no longer the primary motivation for making sculpture today. […] I always compare it to an orchestra: every material is like an instrument. Just as every instrument has its own expressive possibilities, every material possesses its own means of expression.” (Tony Cragg, quoted in Tony Cragg, exh. cat., Galerie Buchmann, Berlin, 2011, n.p.)

Doris Hansmann



Estimated shipping costs for this lot:
The lot is unsuitable for parcel shipping. Transport only by shipping company after consultation following the auction.

additional shipping insurance


Shipping insurance

up to total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: max. 41.65 Euro

over a total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: 1.8 o/oo


USA by individual arrangement after the auction.




#Tony Cragg #Abstraction #Germany #Post-War Art #2020s #Scultpures.







In accordance with §26 UrhG (German Copyright Act), VAN HAM is obliged to pay a statutory resale royalty on the sale proceeds of all original works of fine art and photography whose authors have not been deceased for 70 years prior to the end of the calendar year of the sale. The buyer shall contribute 1.5% of the hammer price to this fee.