Robert Muller (1920-2003) - Grande Composition organique - Etude de Sculpture · No Reserve

We present a superb large drawing depicting an organic composition by Robert Muller (1920–2003)

Title: Organic Composition

Medium: graphite on paper

Period: 1960s

Sheet size: 57.6 x 77.6 cm

Condition: traces of moisture

Robert Müller, born in Zurich in 1920, is a renowned Swiss sculptor and a pioneer of iron sculpture in the 1950s and 1960s.

During the Second World War and the immediate postwar period, he trained in the studios of Otto Bänninger and Germaine Richier, two major sculptors based in Switzerland. Richier’s influence, with her hybrid forms combining human, animal, and natural elements, profoundly shaped his early work.

In 1947, Müller spent two years in Genoa, where he sought to free himself from Richier’s influence by exploring figurative sculptures in plaster and bronze. In 1949, he moved with his family, first to Paris and then to Villiers-le-Bel, where he lived and worked until his death in 2003.

By the mid-1950s, Robert Müller had achieved the highest level of recognition and an international reputation. He was nicknamed “Eisen-Müller.” Along with Swiss sculptors Bernhard Luginbühl and Jean Tinguely, he is considered one of the creators of modern iron sculpture.

His Parisian works, often abstract but with references to the human body, are characterized by an erotic, organic tension, evoking shells or disjointed insects.

Müller exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Paris Biennale between 1956 and 1960, and took part in documenta II in Kassel in 1959.

His works were acquired by prestigious museums, particularly in the United States, and exhibited in galleries such as Jeanne Bucher’s.

Retrospectives of his drawings and engravings were held in 1979 at the Musée Rath, which owns two important iron sculptures (Le Bûcher, 1959, and L’Archange, 1963) and around a dozen drawings dating from 1972 to 1977.
In 1982 and 1996, the print room of the same museum presented two exhibitions, each accompanied by a catalogue raisonné of his printed works, compiled by Rainer Michael Mason.

Despite his considerable acclaim in the 1950s–1970s, he gradually withdrew from the art scene from the mid-1970s onward. He died on October 15, 2003, in Villiers-le-Bel, aged 83, leaving behind an artistic legacy celebrated across Europe, notably through posthumous exhibitions such as the one held at Galerie Schifferli in 2020 to mark the centenary of his birth.