Hans Josephsohn – Biographical Note

Hans Josephsohn was born in May 1920 in Königsberg in East Prussia. There, he attended primary school and completed secondary school in 1937. The same year, he left his German homeland with a small scholarship to study art in Florence. Due to his Jewish heritage, he was forced to leave Italy a short time later. Hans Josephsohn fled to Switzerland, arriving in Zurich in 1938, and became a student of the sculptor Otto Müller. In 1943, he moved into his first atelier and in 1964 began showing his work in solo exhibitions in various cities including Zurich, Schaffhausen and Aarau. He became a Swiss citizen in 1964.
In 1992, the museum La Congiunta opened in Giornico (TI) in a concrete building designed by the architects Peter Märkli and Stefan Bellwalder for the presentation of his work. Since then, around 30 sculptures by Josephsohn have been permanently exhibited there.
At the end of the 90s, the work of Hans Josephsohn began to attract the interest of a broader public. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam dedicated a large solo exhibition to the artist in 2002. In 2003, Hans Josephsohn was awarded the Art Prize of the City of Zurich. The Kesselhaus Josephsohn in St. Gallen, where a regularly changing selection of works by Josephsohn is presented, opened the same year.
Various solo and group exhibitions then followed, including at the Kolumba Art Museum of the Archbishopric of Cologne (2005) and in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2007. In 2008, the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt presented a large solo exhibition of his works. Also in 2008, a large exhibition took place in London at Hauser & Wirth on Piccadilly.
In 2009 in New York, in a solo presentation by Hauser & Wirth at the Armory Show, Josephsohn’s work is being presented to a broad American public for the first time. In the years since 2000, Josephsohn’s work has increasingly been seen, also internationally, as a decisive contribution to the visual arts. The artist lives and works in Zurich.

Exhibitions | Shows of Work | Bibliography