Lebensgröße II / Life Size II

The sculptor Heinz Brehloh used to enter into very deep, even intimate relationships with his pieces, shaping and working the material not only with his hands but with his whole body. This is particularly manifest in the “Lebensgröße” (Life Size) group of works. Manfred Schneckenburger describes the process of their creation: “The artist paces, dances around the soft plaster according to a fixed choreography. He throws his whole body – legs, hips, chest, back, head – against it, embraces the block with his arms, pushes through it with his knees and legs, rubs his head back and forth, thus smoothing its upper face level. He squeezes, turns, contorts himself according to a precisely calculated plan, in and against the block, ploughs through the plaster to the inside, fingers and envelops it from the outside. He continues this bodily orbit until the material has grown hard and resistant. The finished sculpture records the body’s form as a negative volume. It is (in the classical sense of remembrance) a monument of body traces.” (1) The artist himself added: “Actually, there is this idea that the sculpture is a counterpart that couldn’t be closer. The work is finished when there is no more distance between the work and me.”
After the station forecourt had been redesigned, the sculpture “Lebensgröße II” was installed in the artist’s native town as a permanent loan from Krimhild Becker, the widow of the artist who died in 2001. It is surrounded by the “Culture Path,” which recounts the history of the city.

(1) Manfred Schneckenburger: Körperhandlungen wider die Apparatenwelt, in: Skulptur als Körperspur – Heinz Breloh; published on the occasion of the exhibition series “Heinz Breloh – Skulptur als Körperspur” in Bayreuth/Neumünster/Magdeburg/Hilden/Hasselbach 2008–2009, p. 17.

https://www.wz.de/nrw/kreis-mettmann/langenfeld-und-monheim/hilden-ein-breloh-in-lebensgroesse_aid-31046581