From sculpture to woodcuts, glass design to poetry, the work of German artist Egon Altdorf crossed boundaries. Making culture behind the barbed wire was how Altdorf endured wartime captivity, inspiring a life dedicated to art that was innovative, spiritual and redemptive. Exhibiting in London alongside sculptors Barbara Hepworth, Lynn Chadwick and Reg Butler at the Unknown Political Prisoner exhibition (1953), he adopted an increasingly abstract approach, rooted in Biblical symbolism yet embracing different faiths, notably in designs for the outstanding interior of Wiesbadens new synagogue. Exploring Altdorfs work in ten interdisciplinary chapters, this book illuminates the still-overlooked contribution of artists who reshaped postwar existence: the lost generation.
Graham Ward: Introduction
1 Judith LeGrove Egon Altdorf: The lines of life
2 Deborah Lewer The prodigal and the prophecy: Egon Altdorfs woodcuts and
German art debates, c.194852
3 Dorothea Schöne Change and (re)reflection in the sculptural work of Egon
Altdorf after 1945
4 Judith LeGrove A vital Conversation: Egon Altdorf and British sculpture
in the early post-war years
5 Julia Kelly Symbolism of the cosmos in Egon Altdorfs post-war sculpture
6 Elaine Morley Egon Altdorf and the transformative power of art: the
postwar literary context
7 Nicolette David Beyond language: the relationship between art and poetry
in Egon Altdorfs work
8 David Jasper The art of Egon Altdorf: symbolism and spirituality
9 Ulrich Knufinke Wiesbadens new synagogue (1966) and its design by Egon
Altdorf
10 Judith LeGrove Into the light: Egon Altdorfs memorials to the future
Arie Hartog Epilogue
Dr Judith LeGrove is a writer and curator who has worked extensively with sculptors and their archives. Recent publications include The Sculpture of Michael Lyons (2013), Geoffrey Clarke: a sculptors materials (2017), Geoffrey Clarke: catalogue raisonné (2017), and Kenneth Draper: On the Edge of Sculpture (2023). Professor Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Extraordinary Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. His many books include Cities of God (2000), Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (2004), Christ and Culture (2005), Unbelievable (2014) and Another Kind of Normal: Ethical Life II (2022). Dr Deborah Lewer is a specialist in modern German art and also works in the field of the intersection between art and religious faith. She has published widely on modern art, culture and politics in Germany and Switzerland, is a senior lecturer in History of Art at the University of Glasgow and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow. Dr Dorothea Schöne studied art history, political science, sociology and philosophy at Leipzig University. She was a Fulbright exchange student at the University of California, Riverside (20056), later assisting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures (touring, Nuremberg and Berlin, 2010). In 2014 she became director and chief curator of Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin. Her publications focus especially on mid-20th century German art. Dr Julia Kelly is a writer and researcher on modern and contemporary art with interests and expertise in the histories and theories of sculpture, interactions between art and anthropology, art writing, and the legacies of surrealism. She is Course Director at Leeds Beckett University.
