Hans Steinbrenner (sculptor)

Hans Theodor Steinbrenner (25 March 1928 – 18 June 2008) was a German painter and sculptor based in Frankfurt who focused on abstract figures in wood and stone. Many of his works are in public space.

Life and career
Steinbrenner was born in Frankfurt, Germany and grew up in the Frankfurt quarter Praunheim. After World War II, he studied at the Werkkunstschule in Offenbach am Main (now Hochschule für Gestaltung) from 1946 to 1949. He studied further at the Städelschule in Frankfurt until 1952, and then at the Münchener Kunstakademie with Toni Stadler until 1954. He worked from 1958 to 1963 together with his younger brother Klaus Steinbrenner as Hans & Klaus Steinbrenner in Frankfurt. He lived from 1964 until his death in the artists colony in Praunheim.

Since 1999, Steinbrenner was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

Steinbrenner died in Frankfurt on 18 June 2008.

Works
Steinbrenner's earliest works date to the late 1940s. Influenced by his teachers, they are classical single figures and groups. He was later inspired by the works of Constantin Brâncuși and Henri Laurens in Paris. In the mid-1950s, he created abstract high biomorph figures. In the 1960s, he turned to abstract geometric quader sculptures. From the late 1960s, he created high abstract figures, all called Figur. His main materials were shell limestone, wood and bronze.

Together with his brother, he had Große Holzfigur (Great wooden figure) exhibited at the 1964 documenta III in Kassel.

Sculpture garden
His widow, Anne, established a sculpture garden in Praunheim, opposite his former open-air work space, where his works from different periods are exhibited among old trees.

In 2023, celebrating his 95th birthday, his sculptures there were temporarily juxtaposed to works by friends, students and colleagues, sculptors Dietz Eilbacher, Dietrich Heller, Georg Hüter, Jens Trimpin and Thomas Vinson, and the Georgian painter Avto Berdznishvilis.

Awards

 * 1955: ars viva

Works in public space
Several of Steinbrenner's works are in public space, including in Bochum, Bottrop, Bremen, Gießen, Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern and Marl. The majority of those are in the Rhein-Main Region, including Frankfurt, Bad Homburg and Wiesbaden.

Figur (1993) is part of the sculpture garden of the Städel, which owns two more of his sculptures, and the Bronze Figur (1961) is located in the Sandgasse. A wooden Schrift-Stele from 1968 is part of the Grüneburgpark, one figure is part of the Hessischer Rundfunk property, and another was installed on Detmolder Platz in 2019, while a 1979 fountain is on Merianplatz.