Hans Josephsohn Jackie Wullschlager and Thomas Houseago on the Swiss sculptor

Making the case for the most important sculptor since Giacometti: Jackie Wullschlager and Thomas Houseago on the criminally passed-over master, who would have turned 100 this year.

Born to German Jews who would not survive the Holocaust, HANS JOSEPHSOHN remained stateless for much of his adult life. Having fled to Switzerland, he trained as a sculptor under Otto Muller and tirelessly worked outside the limelight until Gunther Forg convinced Amsterdam's Stedelijk to grant him a latecareer show. Now, eight years after his death, Josephsohn's work is archived at the Kesselhaus Josephsohn in St. Gallen, an industrial cathedral dedicated to his mundane yet spiritual practice-which, as Thomas Houseago predicts, will be revered in a more humanist time to come. 

'[...] Josephsohn bids for a different sort of engagement. Made in plaster-direct, vital, alert with imprints and traces of the artist's hand-then cast in brass, his figures are so tactile and sensual that they urge you to walk around and touch them. Simultaneously they are confrontational in their reserve, enveloped in their own realm: fleecing records of a moment, a seance, a pose; fragmentary witnesses to process, change, and the turbulence of their creation. In postwar sculpture, only Giacometti has comparable authority and expressiveness. 

It was an influence Josephsohn admitted yet resisted. Whereas Giacometti's thin, spectral figures are always on the verge of disappearing, Josephsohn's fattened-up ones are depicted as coming uneasily into being. Giacometti pared down, peeled away; Josephsohn added layers, enlarged, expanded. Both are existentialists, turning on absence and presence, being and chaos, the unfinished look. Josephsohn explained, "If you  take anything away ... nothing at all remains. The figure consists solely of relationships. It's the same with me. You can remove a piece and nothing is left." 

Like all important artists, Josephsohn looked back" sculptors throughout history have become my real relatives"- to move forward. He worked in seclusion for decades, probably enhancing his intensity and rigor, and perhaps the strength with which he evokes prehistory, ancient stone steles, and romanesque figures. But when, in his 80s, he began to be shown globally, the resonance for the 21st century was striking: his ability to make indefiniteness monumental, to incorporate doubt, to flirt with and assimilate abstraction, and to move away from mimesis while retaining the figure in an ungainly, surprising way. Seen outdoors, his work is a signal voice as we consider the human imprint on the natural world [...]' – Jackie Wullschlager

'When you walk into the Kesselhaus, you're confronted with this unbelievable, almost comic, almost pathetic humanism, and when you slow down, walking around these works is profoundly moving. It's a very spiritual experience, one you can only have with the greatest of art. You might see a Josephsohn sculpture in a museum and not like it-that's OK. But I defy anybody who comes to visit the Kesselhaus to not immediately get how important he is [...] 

If I look at Josephsohn's work, I have to think of the Venus of Willendorf, of Neolithic art, or of comets or asteroids being sent to us from outer space. Increasingly, scientists believe that life on Earth came from an asteroid impact, so actually  our origin might be cosmic. When I think about sculpture at its best, when I think about Josephsohn, it feels like that. His work subconsciously reminds me of our cosmic origin. Of moon rocks, Martian landscapes, asteroids. His sculpture goes far back in time, not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of years, before there was life. Stanley Brouwn, with whom I studied in Amsterdam, taught that sculpture comes from outer space. Josephsohn, for me, is proof that he was right [...]. – Thomas Houseago