Heinz Warneke, 1895-1983

About this book

This book documents the work and career of the German-American sculptor Heinz Warneke. Mary Mullen Cunningham outlines Warneke's studies at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School during the emergence of European modernism and examines the way in which Warneke's technical craftsman's training affected his views on sculpture. She deals thoroughly with Warneke's role in the American direct carving movement of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as with his forty-year relationship with public art - beginning with a description of his New Deal commissions and ending with a review of his work at Washington National Cathedral. In Germany, during the early part of the twentieth century, Heinz Warneke witnessed the reawakening of direct carving by modernist sculptors who found the traditional academic methods of sculpture-making unsatisfactory. The accepted practice of turning over a plaster model to a professional stone carver or bronze founder, who then translated it into the finished material, was objectionable to modernists because it removed the creation from its creator. Inspired in part by the "discovery" of primitive carvings from Africa and Oceania, many modernists wanted to return sculpture to its roots. For Warneke this notion was further reinforced by a technical, craftsman's training at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School in the 1910s and early 1920s. . For over forty years, Warneke's real contribution to American sculpture was in the field of public works. In 1935, with his work on the Harlem Housing project under the auspices of the New Deal art programs, he began to establish a reputation as a solid and conscientious sculptor, competent to take on large public commissions. Although Warneke had his share of failures in the public art arena, he produced some remarkably successful large-scale works and was a particularly sensitive architectural and animal sculptor. Heinz Warneke contains a checklist of works and an exhibition history that includes significant reviews. The volume is meant to be a foundational study of a long-overlooked twentieth-century sculptor.