Anthony Cragg, 2008

Anthony Cragg: „Caldera“
Sammlung Würth, Inv. 12137

To mark the seventh Salzburg Art Project, the English sculptor Anthony Cragg has installed an approximately 5 metre-high sculpture made of patinated bronze on the Makartplatz. The title „Caldera“ is a geological term denoting a volcanic crater, which in English also carries poetic connotations. Here the artist is exploring space and matter, suffused with the energy and emotion unleashed by dramatic processes. And, not least, he is alluding to the bowl-like location of Salzburg itself.

„Caldera“ is a veritable landscape of bronze, projections and recesses, forms which collide into each other like tectonic plates. Within these structures, the viewer can discern human outlines which suddenly appear, interact spatially and then vanish just as quickly, depending on location and perspective. Anthony Cragg conceives of this walkable sculpture as a ‚mental landscape‘, which can be experienced even within the interior of the “cauldron”.

The artist selected the Makartplatz specifically in order to juxtapose the practical and functional design of this historical site with “purpose-free”, pure art. Standing in direct proximity to the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Holy Trinity Church) and Mozart’s residence, the Square today is dominated by the traffic, the streets, the pavements, the signposts and above all the cars, which coalesce to form „a vast volume of colours and material“, to quote the artist himself. His sculpture confronts the appearance of the Makartplatz with an intellectual rigour, an openness of thought, an original language of form and with the sophisticated materiality of art. Here he is seeking to infuse a spiritual quality into the quotidian functionality of form and material – as the “lowest common denominator“.

Born in Liverpool in 1949 Anthony Cragg moved to Germany upon completion of his arts studies and has been domiciled in Wuppertal since the 1970s. He is winner of the distinguished Turner Prize and in 2007 was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture.

Inaugural Address by Peter Iden

Fotos Eröffnung

Seit 2013 befindet sich dieses Kunstwerk im Eigentum der Würth-Gruppe und ist der Öffentlichkeit und der Stadt Salzburg als Leihgabe zur Verfügung gestellt.
In Kooperation mit der Salzburg Foundation 2013

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