Robert Koenig (sculptor)
Encyclopedia
Robert Koenig is an English sculptor, who specialises in wood sculpture and is a prominent exponent of the art of woodcarving using the traditional tools of mallet and chisel.
of Polish immigrants. He made his first carving as a pupil at the Polish Seminary School, 5 Rue des Irlandais, Paris from 1963–70. He witnessed the student rioters burning cars outside the school in the student riots in Paris in 1968, and remembers playing volleyball with Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow, the later Pope John Paul II
who was a frequent visitor to the Seminary. The building is now the Irish Cultural Centre and was previously the Irish College in Paris
. He graduated from Brighton Polytechnic with First Class Honours in Fine Art in 1976. In 1978 he obtained a Higher Diploma of Postgraduate Sculpture at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art
, London; he was a contemporary of Antony Gormley
, as both attended that school from 1976 to 1978. He won the Boise Travel Bursary in 1978, and in 1983 a scholarship to the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, Poland.
in 1991. 'Steel Totems' is a group of 15 carved sweet chestnut trees up to 19 ft in height and sited on the Oxford Road roundabout in Bilston
,
Wolverhampton in 1997. He regularly works on large scale carved and painted wood relief panels such as the 'Blue Portal no. 7' purchased by the Buckinghamshire County Museum
in Aylesbury in 1997 and the smaller 'Rustic Umbrellas' purchased by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Robert Koenig was one of the first artists to be invited to participate in the Grizedale Forest Sculpture Project, Grizedale Arts
in the Lake District of England. He spent seven months during 1982-83 living and working in a forest environment and left behind six sculptures as his personal response to this landscape. The Grizedale Forest Sculpture Project] was initiated in 1977 and has influenced a generation of sculptors and helped transform the way sculpture is seen and made and understood in public places.
His ongoing monumental woodcarving project 'Odyssey' seeks out temporary exhibition spaces in cathedrals, street corners, town squares, barns and fields in Poland, Ukraine and currently the UK. The UK venues include Rochester Cathedral, Portsmouth Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Chichester Cathedral, Worcester Cathedral and York Minster. Odyssey consists of an ever expanding group of carved wood male and female figures, each 2.5m tall. As of January 2011 there are 38 figures in the Odyssey group.
Since 1996 Robert Koenig has collaborated closely with the Museum Dwory Karwacjanow i Gladyszow in the town of Gorlice in South East Poland. He has held exhibitions there in 1997, 2001 and 2004 and in the nearby town of Tarnow in 1998 and 2004. He is a regular Polish English translator of their art catalogues and associated texts and information boards. He is also helping to set up art workshops and symposiums for UK participants at the newly restored Renaissance castle of Szymbark.
The next major showing of the monumental Odyssey project consisting of 40 figures each 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) tall will take place at St Martin-in-the-Fields
, Trafalgar Square, London from March 19 to July 20 2012.
1982 London Wood Partners Gallery, London
1983 Greenwich Theatre Gallery, London
1986 The Great Barn, Milton Keynes
1987 Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester
1988 Shaw Theatre, London
1992 Rufford Country Park, Notts., 'Temple & Portals', Milton Keynes Exhibition Gallery. 'Out of the Greenwood', Oxfordshire County Museum, Woodstock. 'Temple & Portals', Middlesbrough Art Gallery.
1993 RIBA Sculpture Court, London
1994 'Carmen and Other Stories', High Wycombe Museum
1996 Apsidal Gallery, Rufford Country Park, Notts
1997 'At the Edge of Centuries', Bucks County Museum, Aylesbury. Dwor Karwacjanów Gallery, Gorlice, Poland.
1998 'Dziady' Galeria Pasaz, Tarnow, Poland. 'At the Edge of Centuries' Leighton Buzzard Library Gallery, Bedford Library Gallery, Dunstable Library Gallery.
1999 Horsham Arts Centre
2001 ‘Relics of Memory’, East Kilbride Arts Centre
2002 20 year Retrospective Exhibition, Cadzow Gallery, Hamilton, Scotland
2003 Otter Gallery, University College, Chichester
2004 ‘Galician Odyssey’ – ‘Dziady’ project on tour: Palace of Art, Lwow, Ukraine. ‘Art on a European Street’, Tarnow, Poland. Gallery Strug, Zakopane, Poland. Museum of Archeology, Krakow, Poland. Space Gallery, Krakow, Poland. Dwor Karwacjanow Gallery, Gorlice, Poland.
2006 Odyssey, Brighton Fringe Arts Festival, All Saints Church, (Prizewinner)
2007 Odyssey on tour: Chichester Cathedral, Portsmouth Cathedral, Church of Christ the Cornerstone, Milton Keynes, Rochester Cathedral, Stockport Museum and Art Gallery, Chadkirk Chapel Romiley Cheshire, Museum of Hatting Stockport.
2008 Odyssey on tour: Salisbury Cathedral, Polish Art, Brighton Fringe Festival, York Minster, St Joseph’s Church, Cwmaman, South Wales. Arundel Cathedral, Sussex. North Gallery, Hailsham.
2009 Odyssey on tour: St. Helier, Jersey. Worcester Cathedral
‘The Culture of Wood’ Gibberd Gallery, Harlow (retrospective)
'A Sense of Place' - Sculpture in Landscape - Coelfrith Press ISBN 0 904461 85 8
'The Grizedale Experience' - Cannongate Press 1991 ISBN 0 86241 354 0
'Art in Public' - AN Publications ISBN 0 907730 18 3
'The Encyclopaedia of Sculpting Techniques'- John Plowman, Quarto Books ISBN 0 7472 1278 3
'Start Sculpting' - John Plowman, Quarto Books ISBN 1 85348 960 3
'Natural Order' - The Grizedale Society, 1996 ISBN 0 9525450 5 5
'The Art of the Woodcarver' - GMC Publications ISBN 1 86108 011 5
'At The Edge Of Centuries' - catalogue - essay by Craigie Horsfield -1997
'Dziady' - catalogue - essay by Jerzy Madeyski 1997 ISBN 83-904836-6-1
'Robert Koenig - Sculpture - catalogue - 2002
Early life
Koenig was born in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
of Polish immigrants. He made his first carving as a pupil at the Polish Seminary School, 5 Rue des Irlandais, Paris from 1963–70. He witnessed the student rioters burning cars outside the school in the student riots in Paris in 1968, and remembers playing volleyball with Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow, the later Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
who was a frequent visitor to the Seminary. The building is now the Irish Cultural Centre and was previously the Irish College in Paris
Irish College in Paris
The Irish College in Paris was for three centuries a major Roman Catholic educational establishment, for Irish students. It was founded in the late sixteenth century, and closed down by the French government in the early twentieth century....
. He graduated from Brighton Polytechnic with First Class Honours in Fine Art in 1976. In 1978 he obtained a Higher Diploma of Postgraduate Sculpture at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art
Slade School of Fine Art
The Slade School of Fine Art is a world-renownedart school in London, United Kingdom, and a department of University College London...
, London; he was a contemporary of Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley
Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...
, as both attended that school from 1976 to 1978. He won the Boise Travel Bursary in 1978, and in 1983 a scholarship to the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, Poland.
Work
He is noted for his imaginative and bold use of colour on wood, which started during his Slade student days. He produces woodcarvings both large and small for public and private spaces around the UK. 'Metropolis', a 34 ft oak column, was sited in Campbell Park in Central Milton KeynesMilton Keynes
Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...
in 1991. 'Steel Totems' is a group of 15 carved sweet chestnut trees up to 19 ft in height and sited on the Oxford Road roundabout in Bilston
Bilston
Bilston is a town in the English county of West Midlands, situated in the southeastern corner of the City of Wolverhampton. Three wards of Wolverhampton City Council cover the town: Bilston East and Bilston North, which almost entirely comprise parts of the historic Borough of Bilston, and...
,
Buckinghamshire County Museum
The Buckinghamshire County Museum is a museum in the centre of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, England. It displays artefacts pertinent to the history of Buckinghamshire including geological displays, costume, agriculture and industry...
in Aylesbury in 1997 and the smaller 'Rustic Umbrellas' purchased by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Robert Koenig was one of the first artists to be invited to participate in the Grizedale Forest Sculpture Project, Grizedale Arts
Grizedale Arts
Grizedale Arts is a contemporary arts residency and commissioning agency in the central Lake District in rural Northern England. It conducts cultural projects locally, nationally and internationally...
in the Lake District of England. He spent seven months during 1982-83 living and working in a forest environment and left behind six sculptures as his personal response to this landscape. The Grizedale Forest Sculpture Project] was initiated in 1977 and has influenced a generation of sculptors and helped transform the way sculpture is seen and made and understood in public places.
His ongoing monumental woodcarving project 'Odyssey' seeks out temporary exhibition spaces in cathedrals, street corners, town squares, barns and fields in Poland, Ukraine and currently the UK. The UK venues include Rochester Cathedral, Portsmouth Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Chichester Cathedral, Worcester Cathedral and York Minster. Odyssey consists of an ever expanding group of carved wood male and female figures, each 2.5m tall. As of January 2011 there are 38 figures in the Odyssey group.
Since 1996 Robert Koenig has collaborated closely with the Museum Dwory Karwacjanow i Gladyszow in the town of Gorlice in South East Poland. He has held exhibitions there in 1997, 2001 and 2004 and in the nearby town of Tarnow in 1998 and 2004. He is a regular Polish English translator of their art catalogues and associated texts and information boards. He is also helping to set up art workshops and symposiums for UK participants at the newly restored Renaissance castle of Szymbark.
Dziady – In search of Jan Dudek
Most of us, to some extent, remember the stories we were told as children – fragments of fictional tales designed to engender good behaviour, or simply fuel our imaginations. For Robert Koenig, growing up in the suburbs of Manchester, the stories were all too real – rich tales of his mother’s childhood in south-east Poland, full of community and characters, superseded as he grew older by the altogether darker narrative of her wartime removal to Germany, the hell of the labour camps and her eventual arrival in the UK. For Koenig, the stories stuck, creating a desire to learn more, to see the country of his ancestors and to come to terms with his family history. As a young man in the 1970s, he endured lengthy coach rides and the privations of communist Poland to rebuild the bond with his greater family. As his knowledge of that country grew, so did his realisation that he was shaped more deeply by his past: a sculpting contemporary of Anthony Gormley at London’s prestigious Slade School of Art, Koenig suffered for his instinctive – and unfashionable – decision to work in wood, a form which he was now to appreciate as a distinctly Polish tradition. As he matured, Koenig sought his defining project and so in 1997 began carving a series of greater-than-life-size figures, initially called ‘Dziady’, the Polish name of a ceremony celebrating the memory of deceased ancestors, but since renamed ‘Odyssey’ for what has become an international audience. A mass of figures to represent the ancestors he never met, they are ‘monumental’, although rather than crying out for attention, they appeal to the viewer on a more intimate, empathetic level, often inspiring strong emotions from those who come into contact with them. A film of Robert Koenig’s tour to the Ukraine – ‘Dziady – In Search of Jan Dudek’ will be released soon. (Jan Dudek is Robert Koenig’s sculptor uncle who died in 1929 in Przemyslany, Poland – now a part of Western Ukraine).Odyssey
‘Odyssey’ finally arrived in the UK in 2006 and was honoured by the Brighton Festival Fringe in that year. At the sculptors request they are currently touring unconventional venues – including a series of churches and cathedrals - in the UK, reaching out to ‘ordinary’ people rather than being cosseted in a gallery. Koenig has always looked for new ways to display his work and the Odyssey tour also majors heavily on music, encouraging local players to engage in a ‘conversation’ with the work. In the film showing here, saxophonist Tony Rose provides an improvisation inspired by the figures (including the introductory music in the piece) and acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Phil Thornton is seen interacting with the figures during their Brighton stay.The next major showing of the monumental Odyssey project consisting of 40 figures each 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) tall will take place at St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Its patron is Saint Martin of Tours.-Roman era:Excavations at the site in 2006 led to the discovery of a grave dated about 410...
, Trafalgar Square, London from March 19 to July 20 2012.
Reviews
Foreword to the catalogue of the Robert Koenig's retrospective exhibition 1982-2002 at the Cadzow Gallery, Chatelherault, Hamilton, Scotland, by distinguished Polish artist and rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland, Prof. Włodzimierz Kunz.Solo exhibitions
1977 Polish Cultural Institute, London1982 London Wood Partners Gallery, London
1983 Greenwich Theatre Gallery, London
1986 The Great Barn, Milton Keynes
1987 Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester
1988 Shaw Theatre, London
1992 Rufford Country Park, Notts., 'Temple & Portals', Milton Keynes Exhibition Gallery. 'Out of the Greenwood', Oxfordshire County Museum, Woodstock. 'Temple & Portals', Middlesbrough Art Gallery.
1993 RIBA Sculpture Court, London
1994 'Carmen and Other Stories', High Wycombe Museum
1996 Apsidal Gallery, Rufford Country Park, Notts
1997 'At the Edge of Centuries', Bucks County Museum, Aylesbury. Dwor Karwacjanów Gallery, Gorlice, Poland.
1998 'Dziady' Galeria Pasaz, Tarnow, Poland. 'At the Edge of Centuries' Leighton Buzzard Library Gallery, Bedford Library Gallery, Dunstable Library Gallery.
1999 Horsham Arts Centre
2001 ‘Relics of Memory’, East Kilbride Arts Centre
2002 20 year Retrospective Exhibition, Cadzow Gallery, Hamilton, Scotland
2003 Otter Gallery, University College, Chichester
2004 ‘Galician Odyssey’ – ‘Dziady’ project on tour: Palace of Art, Lwow, Ukraine. ‘Art on a European Street’, Tarnow, Poland. Gallery Strug, Zakopane, Poland. Museum of Archeology, Krakow, Poland. Space Gallery, Krakow, Poland. Dwor Karwacjanow Gallery, Gorlice, Poland.
2006 Odyssey, Brighton Fringe Arts Festival, All Saints Church, (Prizewinner)
2007 Odyssey on tour: Chichester Cathedral, Portsmouth Cathedral, Church of Christ the Cornerstone, Milton Keynes, Rochester Cathedral, Stockport Museum and Art Gallery, Chadkirk Chapel Romiley Cheshire, Museum of Hatting Stockport.
2008 Odyssey on tour: Salisbury Cathedral, Polish Art, Brighton Fringe Festival, York Minster, St Joseph’s Church, Cwmaman, South Wales. Arundel Cathedral, Sussex. North Gallery, Hailsham.
2009 Odyssey on tour: St. Helier, Jersey. Worcester Cathedral
‘The Culture of Wood’ Gibberd Gallery, Harlow (retrospective)
Publications
'Open Air Sculpture in Britain' - Zwemmer/Tate Gallery ISBN 0 302 02749 1'A Sense of Place' - Sculpture in Landscape - Coelfrith Press ISBN 0 904461 85 8
'The Grizedale Experience' - Cannongate Press 1991 ISBN 0 86241 354 0
'Art in Public' - AN Publications ISBN 0 907730 18 3
'The Encyclopaedia of Sculpting Techniques'- John Plowman, Quarto Books ISBN 0 7472 1278 3
'Start Sculpting' - John Plowman, Quarto Books ISBN 1 85348 960 3
'Natural Order' - The Grizedale Society, 1996 ISBN 0 9525450 5 5
'The Art of the Woodcarver' - GMC Publications ISBN 1 86108 011 5
'At The Edge Of Centuries' - catalogue - essay by Craigie Horsfield -1997
'Dziady' - catalogue - essay by Jerzy Madeyski 1997 ISBN 83-904836-6-1
'Robert Koenig - Sculpture - catalogue - 2002