Der Wächter

Der Wächter is a bronze sculpture that sits on a lawn in front of a bank building in Kiel, Germany. Kurt Lehmann shaped its angular male figure in the early 1960s. He meant it as a deliberate break with the naturalistic style of the years before.

Move closer and the figure offers form in place of a likeness. The bronze suggests the human body rather than defining it, with exaggerated proportions and details left out. He played with forms instead of making the shape pleasing or charming. The architecture around it follows a strict geometry. Against that order the flowing bronze stands out all the more.

Lehmann was born in Koblenz in 1905 and studied at the State Art Academy in Kassel from 1924 to 1929. From 1949 to 1969 he held a professorship in sculpture at the Technical University in Hanover. In 1955 he was part of the first Documenta in Kassel. Many of his works can be found in Hanover. From 1970 he lived and worked in Staufen im Breisgau, and he died in Hanover on 16 March 2000. What stays with you in Kiel is the pose: a man built from angles, seated on grass rather than on a plinth.