Hans Josephsohn, grande figura distesa, 1971, installation view, Kesselhaus Josephsohn, San Gallo. Foto: Katalin Deér, Kesselhaus Josephsohn St.Gallen Courtesy Josephsohn Estate, Kesselhaus Josephsohn/Galerie Felix Lehner, Hauser & Wirth

My sculptures are not about life in general but rather they lead their own lives. 

— Hans Josephsohn

Mocube announces the solo exhibition God Formed Man from the Dust of the Ground by the renowned Swiss master sculptor Hans Josephsohn in Beijing. This exhibition also marks Josephsohn’s first solo exhibition in Chinese mainland, featuring representative brass sculptures spanning different periods of his artistic career. Over the course of his long creative life, Josephsohn drew inspiration from the most primordial sculptural forms of prehistoric figurines, developing a distinctive artistic language that traverses the history of sculpture.Born in 1920 in Königsberg, East Prussia, into a Jewish family, Josephsohn fled Nazi Germany in 1938 to study in Florence. Soon afterward, he was forced to leave Italy due to the racial laws enacted under Benito Mussolini and eventually arrived in Switzerland. There, he worked quietly for more than half a century, dedicating himself to sculpture in its most ancient sense: the representation and commemoration of the human body—standing, seated, and reclining figures, as well as heads and busts. He was both a geographical and political exile—experiences that were clearly intertwined—and, on a cultural and aesthetic level, an exile from his own time. His parents and sisters were perished in the The Holocaust. For this solitary immigrant, “Sculpture became my homeland. The sculptors of history were my true relatives.”At the end of the Second World War, Josephsohn became a sculptor. From that historical turning point, he developed his own artistic path—one that, while acknowledging the fragility and uncertainty of humanism after the Holocaust and Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nevertheless reaffirms humanity and offers human beings an image of themselves.

Arguably, no twentieth century artists more than Henry Moore and Hans Josephsohn have so clearly linked the reposed female body to landscape forms, though whilst their sources share similarities, the results are quite different. Josephsohn’s reclining women are also organic, but they are turmoiled, craggy, broiling with energy, seemingly drawn more from beneath the surface of the earth and connecting to primordial life. —— Clare Lilley

In any Josephsohn exhibition, the overwhelming and instant impres - sion is of solitary, unyielding figures, craggy as boulders, lumbering, ungainly, constructed from rough encrusted layers. They effortlessly command the space around them, yet are elusive, reclusive, withdrawn. Early pieces are loosely representational, later ones are monumental abstractions, but they all have a reserve so deep as to be confrontational. ——JACKIE WULLSCHLÄGER

About the Artist

Portrait of Hans Josephsohn. Photo by Katalin Deér. Courtesy of Kesselhaus Josephsohn

Hans Josephsohn (1920, Königsberg – 2012, Zurich)Josephsohn is regarded alongside Alberto Giacometti as one of the two most important Swiss sculptors of the 20th century. Like the British sculptor Henry Moore, both received a classical education and training in sculpture. However, Josephsohn’s work possesses a strong modernist sensibility, and today it is increasingly valued and admired by curators, artists, and collectors alike. Josephsohn has also had aprofound influence on younger generations of Swiss artists, such as Fischli/Weiss and Urs Fischer. As a sculptor, Hans Josephsohn focused primarily on the human figure, with his works directly conveying the presence of the human body. Over the course of more than sixty years, Josephsohn continuously developed and refined his artistic style. While his style is entirely modernist, he never denied its connection to the tradition of sculpture. His works embody a remarkable combination of simplicity, rough surfaces, and thoughtfully conceived volumes. In his later years, the artist gained widespread international recognition, with solo and major retrospective exhibitions held at institutions including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Museum Folkwang, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Kunstmuseum Luzern, the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Museum of Modern Art Oxford, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Kolumba Art Museum in Cologne, and the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. His sculptures have been featured in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale, and his works are held in the collections of institutions such as MoMA and Tate Modern.The Felix Lehner Gallery in St. Gallen, Switzerland, serves as the representative for Hans Josephsohn’s estate. His work is also jointly represented by Hauser & Wirth, Thaddaeus Ropac, Galerie Max Hetzler, and Skarstedt.

About the Exhibition

Hans Josephsohn: God Formed Man from the Dust of the Ground 

Dates: 2026.3.14 4:00 pm - 2026.5.10

Venue: Mocube

Address: 706 North 2nd Street, 798 Art District, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Courtesy of Mocube, edited by CAFA ART INFO.