Current Exhibition

Heinrich Kirchner, Moon Rider, 1969, on permanent loan from the Knauf Collection, Berlin, for Neumarkt i.d.OPf. city park. Photo: Andreas Pauly
Heinrich Kirchner, Moon Rider, 1969, on permanent loan from the Knauf Collection, Berlin, for Neumarkt i.d.OPf. city park. Photo: Andreas Pauly

Heinrich Kirchner

From image to symbol

26. October 2025 to 8. March 2026

Introduction: Dr. Birk Ohnesorge, Bremen

Heinrich Kirchner, born in Erlangen in 1902, was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and Lothar Fischer's teacher. Fischer was Kirchner's assistant in the bronze workshop and, from 1955, his master student in the sculpture class. Heinrich Kirchner also taught him the bronze casting technique using the lost wax method, which had a significant influence on Kirchner´s work from 1927 until his death in Pavolding in Chiemgau in 1984.

Today, the sculptor is known to the general public primarily for his sculptures in public spaces in Chiemgau and for the famous Heinrich Kirchner sculpture garden on the Burgberg in Erlangen. One of the sculptures there, among the numerous monumental bronzes in the midst of wild nature, is the late work Man in a Boat with long, tube-like limbs, the body stretched horizontally forward and the arms spread wide to the side. The boat can be understood as a symbol of the continuously changing flow of life. The engraving of Albert Einstein's formula for the theory of relativity (E=mc²) on the man's chest serves as a symbol of the metamorphosis of being and the permanently renewing nature. One of Kirchner's major works can be seen in Neumarkt's city park: His Moon Riders from 1969 are placed in the immediate vicinity of the museum.

The overview exhibition at the Museum Lothar Fischer presents around 50 works, early portraits in wood and terracotta, sculptural images of people and animals from different creative phases as well as important models for later large-scale sculptures in bronze. This clearly shows how the sculptor's works steadily moved away from representationalism. In order to increase the expressiveness of his works, Kirchner developed an increasingly simple, abstract and more intense formal language. This process was inspired, among other things, by Romanesque, Egyptian and Etruscan art, whose simplicity and cultic imagery deeply impressed him. Throughout his life, it was not his aim to present accurate images of human beings, but rather to create symbols. As an artist, Heinrich Kirchner was also always convinced of the existence of a world beyond the visible.

For their support of the exhibition we would like to express our gratitude to Collection Knauf Berlin, Kunstpalais - Städtische Sammlungen Erlangen, the artist's legacy in Ascholding and Heidelberg, the Ohnesorge Gallery in Bremen, the Heinrich Kirchner Gallery and the Heinrich Kirchner Sculpture Trail in Seebruck.