Georg Wrba (3 January 1872 – 9 January 1939) was a German sculptor and graphic artist. He created some 3,000–4,000 works, including as a collaborator of the Zwinger workshop.
Life
Wrba was born in Munich in 1872, the son of a smith. His younger brother Max Wrba became an architect in Dresden.
After some time spent in Italy (with Egon Rheinberger), a trip made possible by a travel award from Prince Regent Luitpold, he settled in Munich as an independent sculptor in 1897 and became director of the city's school of sculpture.
Wrba then moved to Dresden, where from 1907 to 1930 he taught at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. He brought the Dresden school of sculpture into contact with the reforming ideas of the Deutscher Werkbund and was a founding member of the Dresden Artists' Association, known as "Die Zunft" ("The Guild"). The basic aim of the "Werkbund", and also of "Die Zunft", was to achieve a collaboration between and integration of various forms of art, rejecting ornamentation for its own sake: painting and sculpture were to form integral parts of architecture.
In Dresden he made, among many other works, the Marie Gey Fountain near the Dresden Hauptbahnhof in the Südvorstadt, which was donated by a Dr. Heinze for his wife, a student at the Kunstakademie, who had died young. In 1910 Wrba agreed a contract for the restoration and completion of the missing parts of the Zwinger, for which he directed the work of 53 sculptors from 1911 to 1933, and himself created many groups of figures modelled from the life.
Wrba died on 9 January 1939 in Dresden, where a street is named after him. He is buried in the Munich Waldfriedhof.
Selected works
Georg Wrba's works principally comprise sculptures for buildings and fountains, and small-scale figures.
1899: Seal Fountain (Seehund-Brunnen) (bronze), Berlin, in the inner courtyard of the Rudolf Virchow Clinic
1899: sculptural decoration on the fountain of the Bismarck Tower (Bismarckturm) on the Starnberger See[2]
1906–1911: contributions to the decorative building sculptures on the Altes Stadthaus in Berlin, including "Allegories of the Civic Virtues" and the decor of the banqueting hall (Bärensaal – "Bears' Hall")[4]
1909: Bismarck Fountain on the market place in Arnstadt
1910: group of "Bacchus on a Drunken Donkey" and two sitting bronze lions with shields on the east side, and the Hietzig Fountain on the west side, of the Neues Rathaus in Dresden[6]
1910: figure of Aphrodite on the Marie Gey Fountain in the Friedrich-List-Platz in Dresden
1910: relief of "Siegfried's Entrance into Worms" on the Cornelianum in Worms[7]
1910: bronze lions in front of the Neues Rathaus in Dresden
1911: Rathaus Fountain at the Neues Rathaus in Dresden
1911–1933: artistic director of the restoration works on the Zwinger, Dresden
1917: "Large Bathing Figures" (Große Badende) on a mussel shell (bronze) for a country house in Klein Flottbek owned by Max Emden; since 1928 on the Roman-style bathing pool of the palazzo of Max Emden on the Brissago Islands on Lake Maggiore, Switzerland
1926: Mönckeberg Fountain in Hamburg (WV 273); construction of the fountain (to designs made in collaboration with the architect Fritz Schumacher) 1914–1920; completion of the side bronze figures 1926 (badly damaged in 1944; the lion was reconstructed by the Hamburg sculptor Philipp Harth in 1965)[10]
1927: "Contemplating Figure" (Die Sinnende), in private ownership
1927: group of figures "Widow with two Children" (Witwe mit zwei Kindern) for the war memorial in Radebeul
1928: "Runner" (Läufer), in private ownership
1929: "Death the Cutter" (Der Schnitter Tod) for the crematorium in Forst
Drago Bock: Es sucht seinesgleichen. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung, Ausgabe Wurzen, 10 May 2010
Günter Kloss: Georg Wrba (1872–1939). Ein Bildhauer zwischen Historismus und Moderne (= Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, Band 2.) Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 1998 ISBN3-932526-20-1