ERICH FRITZ REUTER. BRONZE HEAD.

Erich Fritz Reuter, bronze head, height: 30 cm.

Erich Fritz Reuter was born in Berlin in 1911 and is one of the most important sculptors of the German post-war period. In 1926 he left the Köllnisches Gymnasium in Berlin Mitte, began an apprenticeship as a stonemason and became familiar with restoration work in palaces and museum buildings by 1934. In addition, from 1926 to 1929 he also attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Reuter and his brother are active in radical left-wing youth organizations and ultimately flee from the Nazis to Spain. From then on he turned against politics and devoted himself entirely to art. From 1934 to 1940 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and graduated from the master school for sculptors. His style was primarily influenced by his role models Lehmbruck, Barlach and Kolbe. After the end of the Second World War, Reuter initially went to Dresden, but then moved to western Berlin in 1949. In 1952 Reuter became a professor for sculptural design at the Technical University of Berlin and trained prospective architects. Although Erich Fritz Reuter still did not work in the abstract like most sculptors of the time, he received the first prize of the Association of German Art Critics in 1953. In the years that followed, Reuter won several construction-related art competitions such as Bad Kreuznach 1956, Wolfsburg 1957 and 1961, Bonn 1958, Giessen 1959, Rio de Janeiro 1960, Münster 1962, Lagos 1962 and continued to create numerous portraits of actors. In 1966, the Gattlen gallery in Lausanne showed the first Reuters retrospective. The bronze relief "Opposite Structures" created in 1963 (Audimax of the TU Berlin) is shown at the World Exhibition in Montreal. From 1966 to 1968 Reuter accepted a visiting professorship in Istanbul. Back in Berlin, from 1973 to 1981 Reuter designed floor works for the State Library and the Institute for Music Research. In the mid-1980s, Reuter's health deteriorated and he moved to the countryside in Holstein. Reuter died there in Stolpe in 1997.