Fritz Koenig

Fritz Koenig (20 June 1924 – 22 February 2017) was a German sculptor best known outside his native country for The Sphere, which once stood in the plaza beneath the two World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan. With its damage deliberately left unrepaired, the sculpture now stands in Manhattan's Liberty Park as a memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks. His oeuvre includes other works, including other memorials.

Biography

Born in Würzburg, Koenig's family moved to the Bavarian community of Landshut when he was six years old. In the years after World War II, he studied art at the Kunstakademie München (Munich School of Art), graduating in 1952. Nine years later, he moved to Ganslberg, a farming community outside Landshut where he lived and worked on a horse farm. In 1964, he was appointed professor of art at the Technical University of Munich. He died in Landshut on 22 February 2017, aged 92.

Work

Koenig's body of work largely consists of figures or shapes assembled from simple geometric forms cast in metal. His representions of human form are heavily stylized, with heads made of spheres and bodies and limbs of cylinders. His Holocaust memorial design exemplifies this, adding bones poured on a mound.

Major works

• The Sphere, 1969–71, now displayed in Liberty Park in New York City.
• German memorial at Mauthausen concentration camp, 1983
• Memorial to victims of the Munich massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
• Permanent exhibits at the Hofberg Sculpture Museum in Landshut.