Prototypes for a New Species, Paperback

This book is published on the occasion of his major exhibition at SCHIRN Kunsthalle Frankfurt, surveys Gironcoli's haunting late oeuvre, gathering the most important works.

The eccentric Austrian artist Bruno Gironcoli (b. 1936 in Villach; d. 2010 in Vienna) ranks among the most important sculptors of his generation. Starting in the early 1960s, he built a singular oeuvre, producing a succession of innovative series that unsparingly probed human existence in all its complexity and inscrutability. Gironcoli's aesthetic of excess and opulence, an inexhaustible profusion of excrescences and flourishes, inspired numerous younger artists. He rose to international renown with the large sculptures of his late years, in which archetypal figures meld with trivial elements to form futuristic conglomerates. The monumental pieces have the air of prototypes for a new species, clad in alluringly gleaming surfaces of gold, silver, and copper.