Hans Josephsohn

Swiss · b. 1920

Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012) was a Swiss sculptor whose lifelong practice centered on the human figure and its presence in space. Born in Königsberg, he moved to Switzerland in 1938 and settled in Zurich, where he studied sculpture with Otto Müller and established his own studio in 1943. Josephsohn created standing, seated, and reclining figures, heads, half-figures, and reliefs, working first in plaster and subsequently casting selected works in brass. Over decades, his forms evolved from relatively geometric structures toward dense, roughly worked volumes in which bodily presence emerges through mass, surface, and proportion. His sculptures combine an archaic physicality with an intensely modern approach to the figure, concentrating on presence, relationships, and the experience of the body in space.