Selbstbildnis aus Draht

The »Self-Portrait in Wire« shows, in a humorous but artistic fashion, the fourth director of the Kunsthalle, Heinz Reinhard Fuchs (1917–2001). Although Fuchs began his work at the Kunsthalle in 1947 as a research assistant, he also had a great sense for design, which he employed, among other things, in the typographical layout of exhibition catalogues—an area of work not typical for an art historian.

In 1959 Fuchs was appointed director of the Kunsthalle, a post he occupied until 1983. His term of office was marked by important purchases, such as Francis Bacon’s »Pope II« (1951), Constantin Brancusi’s »Le grand poisson« (1930), and Alberto Giacometti’s »Composition avec trois figures et une tête (la place)« (1950). Fuchs’s Self-Portrait in Wire was probably inspired by the work of the American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898–1976), whose work he featured in an exhibition in 1959. Calder and Fuchs became friends and Fuchs adopted the sculptor’s material—flexible, but nonetheless stable wire—in order to create this striking self-portrait.