"Kopffüßler Mit Einer Wunde (Head-Footer With a Wound)" Lithograph by Horst Ante

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Description

A surrealist etching in graphite tones portrays a distorted human form, with exaggerated facial features fused into the torso. A … Read more A surrealist etching in graphite tones portrays a distorted human form, with exaggerated facial features fused into the torso. A quintessential Kopffüßler—Antes’s iconic “head-footer” figure—stands in profile with the body reduced to a mask-like head that flows directly into foreshortened limbs. The wound is marked as a stark, graphic interruption within the otherwise even fields of tone, heightening the figure’s vulnerability. Evoking existential tension, the piece balances meticulous shading with unsettling anatomy.

Numbered (93) and signed in pencil (edition of 200) with the blind stamp of the Cercle Graphique Européen, the print encapsulates the artist’s shift from gestural informel toward a rigorously pared, archetypal human form. It reflects mid-century European surrealist traditions.

About the artist
Horst Antes (b. 1936, Heppenheim) is a leading figure of Germany’s post-war Neue Figuration (new figurative painting). A student—and later professor—at the Karlsruhe Academy under HAP Grieshaber, he developed the Kopffüßler around 1960, a figure with a large, often egg-shaped head and truncated body that he explored across painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Critics have read this emblematic form as a deliberate counter-image to authoritarian ideals of the body, giving Antes’s pared-down anatomy both psychological and historical weight. See less