Emil Cimiotti

About the artist

Emil Cimiotti, born in Göttingen in 1927, is one of the most important German sculptors of his generation. From 1955 onwards, he developed a completely new, unique formal language in sculpture. He dispensed with the unity of sculptural form, which was often broken up and dissolved into abstract, organic-looking structures reminiscent of vegetation, earth formations, clouds and anthropomorphic figures; mental comparisons that are reinforced by the titles of the works that Cimiotti subsequently and associatively gave his bronzes. From the late 1960s onwards, Cimiotti's sculptures became more figurative with female torsos and floral forms. This phase continued in the 1970s with the inclusion of manipulated impressions of nature in his works (e.g. "Blätterbrunnen", erected in 1976, Hanover) as well as vanitas and memento mori motifs in the form of skulls, skeletal bodies and still lifes. But even in these years, Cimiotti was formally interested primarily in the structures of his subjects. This was confirmed by the bronzes he created in the last three decades with their vegetal, geological or landscape references. Landscape associations are also linked to Cimiotti's mixed media compositions on paper, which also show the artist's exploration of colour as a creative medium. Since 2012, he has been creating a new group of works, "paper reliefs", made from creased, folded, compressed or corrugated paper, which thematise structure and colour in equal measure.

After an apprenticeship as a stonemason, Emil Cimiotti studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart under Otto Baum from 1949. He met Willi Baumeister, who became one of the young artist's most important intellectual mentors. In 1951, a short, unsatisfactory period of study followed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under Karl Hartung. Cimiotti went to Paris for a semester, where he studied at the École de la Grande Chaumière under Ossip Zadkine and visited the studios of Constantin Brancusi, Le Corbusier and Fernand Léger. At the end of 1951, he returned to Stuttgart, where he completed his studies in 1954. Cimiotti was recognised early on. He was represented at the Venice Biennale in 1958 and 1960 and at the documenta in Kassel in 1959 and 1963. He was awarded the prestigious "junger westen" art prize twice, in 1957 and 1959. In 1959, he was awarded a scholarship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Museums and private collections acquire his works. In 1963, the artist was offered a chair in sculpture at the newly founded Braunschweig University of Art, which he held until 1992. Cimiotti subsequently received further honours. In 2017, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover honoured him with a solo exhibition.