Dying Youth with Female Figure

History of the work

In field C2 of the Bremgarten cemetery stands a bronze sculpture made by Karl Schenk in 1959. Its title, 'Sterbender Jüngling mit Frauenfigur' (Dying Youth with Female Figure), names the two figures that can be seen: a young man and a woman. Wikimedia Commons records the work with photographs from 2019. The available sources do not say for whom the grave was made, who ordered the sculpture or how large it is.

Schenk was born in Bern on 24 October 1905 and also died in Bern, on 14 December 1973 (SIKART). His father, an art metalworker, wanted to spare him an insecure artist's life; so the son trained as a gravestone carver and pursued anatomical studies on the side, as the Karl Schenk Museum reports. The museum names Karl Hänny, E. Dürig and August Paris as his teachers. In 1934 he went to Paris with a grant and met the sculptors Édouard-Marcel Sandoz and Arnold Huggler there; he returned with about 400 drawings and afterwards worked independently in Bern as a sculptor and painter (Wikipedia).

According to Wikipedia his sculptures stand on public buildings and in parks in Bern, Zurich, Winterthur, Solothurn, Lucerne and Ticino. For the City of Bern's water supply he created the mosaic 'Trinkender Faun' (Drinking Faun), and for the municipality of Köniz a stained glass window measuring three by five metres. In the last twenty years of his life he mainly painted, putting children and animals at the centre. Since 2019 a museum of its own in Fraubrunnen Castle has shown his work.

A few steps away, in the same field, the portrait head that Schenk modelled in 1933 stands on the grave of Robert Grimm. More than 25 years separate the two bronzes, which makes it possible to compare Schenk's early and late style on site.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Wikimedia Commons: Kategorie Bronzeplastik Sterbender Jüngling mit Frauenfigur (Karl Schenk 1959) · SIKART: Karl Schenk · Wikipedia (de): Karl Schenk (Künstler) · Karl Schenk Museum: Lebenslauf Karl Schenk · Karl Schenk Museum: Startseite