The year 2020 marks the tenth anniversary of Josef Pillhofer's death while 2021 will be the
centenary of his birth. To celebrate these occasions the present catalog commemorates the life
and work of one of Austria's most important sculptors and draftsmen.After studying with Fritz
Wotruba and others in Vienna Pillhofer moved to Paris where he studied with Ossip Zadkine. His
engagement with the protagonists of cubist sculpture-including Jaques Lipchitz Alexander
Archipenko Henri Laurens Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti in addition to
Zadkine-influenced his formal language. In his depictions of figures Pillhofer would start
from realistic conditions but he increasingly integrated non-representational geometric
objects into his oeuvre. Wilfried Skreiner has described him as Austria's first
non-representational sculptor.Text: Hans-Peter Wipplinger Ivan Ristic Josef Pillhofer Alfred
Schmeller.
