Labor für Gestaltung · Hannover

"Born in Donauwörth, Bavaria, in 1966, I grew up in the Württemberg Allgäu. My father was a teacher of mathematics and physics, but he was also extremely good at drawing, watercolor and carving. When I didn't want to sleep as a child, he drew me jet fighters with colored ballpoint pens, which flew over our heads in low flight and impressed me very much, with pilots in the cockpit in a three-dimensional view, which I then got the next day.

In the art advanced course at the grammar school we dealt with modernism with its sculptures from Kolbe to Lehmbruck to Moore. I liked the spatial effect of the figures and the sacral atmosphere in the exhibitions on various outings. The possibility of making a terracotta sculpture in the subject of metamorphosis tree-man in five hours in the Abitur exam was very well for me.

Graphically it then continued in Munich. First of all, it was technical drawing, because I started an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic with Thomas Markl, secondly, I took three semesters at Studio Zeiler, art school for drawing and painting, in Schellingstrasse in Schwabing, a historic place, because in these rooms used to live the sculptor Wilhelm Hüsgen, who founded the art school Phalanx together with Wassily Kandinsky and others in 1901. So today's highly praised moderns sat together in the same rooms. With us students, two world wars and several cultural revolutions later, objects, portraits and nudes were on the curriculum. In the Deutsches Museum I drew airplanes, in the Glyptothek marble heads.

Then I left Metropolis and apprenticeship, first registered for architecture in Kaiserslautern and a little later started the diploma course in product design in Hildesheim. There I attended the nude drawing course with the sculptor Otto Almstadt almost every semester, in other courses with him it was about techniques with pencil and ink, plastically created man and animal from clay and plaster.

In a period of about ten years, in which the professional contents of graphic design, product design and interior design, among other things in a long collaboration with graduate designer Michael Beyer in his studio Projektdesign in Hameln, were the focus, aside from pencil illustrations to a short story book I didn’t get much else done in the sense of the free art. That's how it stayed when I later became a busy magazine layouter in Sarstedt and finally in Hanover. But in the middle of 2001, a torso made of clay from my then life partner was created in Hanover, which her sculptural father then poured in bronze.

Since 2015 I have been dedicating myself to figurative sculpture again with increasing intensity. It started with a head portrait, followed by a half standing in 2016/2017, a kneeling in 2020 and a standing half-size in 2021. I had two works cast in the foundry of Fujimi Barth in Rinteln, a place where you can breathe pure art history in addition to metal fragrance.

At the same time, the old artists provide inspiration, but also curiosity about their life achievement and their time circumstances. In 2023, my first book project on this topic was published by BoD: "Modern sculpture before the breakthrough of abstraction".

In 2024, small movement studies made of clay and wire in 4 different colors were created - as well as a mother-child group as a small sculpture.

From mid-2024 to 2025 I worked on a second sculptor book, it is a German sample case of figurative sepulcral sculpture from 1890 to 1930 in a romantic city cemetery in Hanover, which I occasionally use for drawing. I would be happy if you take a look. You can easily find "Engesohder Skulptur" at BoD, Thalia, Lehmanns, Amazon u.K.

After the book break, in 2025 I went back to my own sculptural work, with a 30 centimeter high figure in the knee seat and "Meritaton", a slightly larger-than-life bust in the style of an ancient Egyptian princess.

Based on the Art Deco, the 49 cm high group "Acting" was created at the beginning of 2026. Then the 20-weeks work period on "Summer'26" began. For me, the 85 cm high two-thirds figure exudes openness and self-confidence.

I will keep you up to date here. Greetings from your Bernhard Lubos.“