Biography
Robert Koenig was born in Manchester, England in 1951 of Polish immigrants. He completed his secondary education in Paris, France before returning to England to study art. In 1978 he graduated from the prestigious Slade School of Art at the University of London where he specialised in sculpture. Since that time he has been living and working in England as a professional sculptor.
In his early career he was one of the first artists to be invited to participate in the Grizedale Forest Sculpture Project in the English Lake District. He spent seven months during 1982/83 living and working in a forest environment. He left behind six sculptures as his personal response to this landscape. The Grizedale Forest Sculpture Project was initiated in 1977 and has influenced a generation of sculptors and has helped transform the way sculpture is seen, made and understood in public places. Robert Koenig has continued to make work for sculpture trails, parks, woods throughout the country..
A consistent theme in his work has been the carved and painted wood relief panel. The earliest examples of this type of work appeared in 1981 with panels like 'Rustic Umbrellas', purchased by the Arts Council of Great Britain and '104 Seated Figures', exhibited at the time in the Whitechapel Gallery, London. What typified these and later panels, was the use of the repeated motif used in order to achieve a sense of pattern and rhythm. The power of the repeated image fascinated him. Pattern, repetition, rhythm, as if there was a heart beating subliminally behind it all. It is the rhythm that signals the existence of life, the regularity of the pulse that can signal well being or foreshadow ill health. This use of repetition in those days intrigued a lot of people, especially in the form of carved wood relief. He recently heard an interview with the renowned Polish composer of classical scores and film soundtracks, Wojciech Kilar, who said that, the one element that has dominated music in recent years is the use of repetition (Glass, Gorecki etc). Robert Koenig felt a curious justification for all those years of work in the 1980's on his carved wood panels.
His 'Temple and Portals' exhibition of 1992 marked an important body of work in which he presented a series of large carved and painted wood relief panels, a series of life size carved wood figures and a carved wood 'Temple' construction. At this time the artist and writer Craigie Horsfield wrote: Robert Koenig's is a unique voice in British Sculpture, indeed it is doubtful that his work can properly be said to be British. It is European Sculpture, not as a transnational and indistinct idea of the modern world, but the product of a specific region and time, speaking through history. Robert Koenig is part of a tradition that is resurfacing after a time of near invisibility. He drew from a culture of carving that was rooted in the folk art of Central Europe; a naturalistic depiction of the world with mythic overtones, it is the great and undeniable strength of Koenig's work that from the most simple gestures, the most seemingly naive articulation, he describes a figure of pathos".
The next stage in Robert Koenig's artistic development is the exhibition 'At the Edge of Centuries' from 1997. It is the first time he started to address issues of ancestry, belonging, heritage and tradition. Using photographs he took in his mother's home village of Dominikowice in South East Poland he created a series of large panels, some 240 x 210cm in size, applying photographic techniques on black painted strips of wood and strips of ancient bog oak. Bog oak is thousands of years old. It is timber that fell into marshland, sank slowly, and was finally buried. Low ph levels in the water act as a preservative effectively preventing the oak from rotting. Depending on the conditions and the time under water bog oak can attain a jet black hue similar to ebony. Therefore ancient bog oak was the right wood to use to address issues of ancestry.
He used the sawdust from the bog oak to create a large series of drawings. He continues to develop this technique. He made a series of dust drawings including copper leaf on his return from the Ukrainian tour of "Odyssey" in 2004. They are jet black and abstract. He calls them "Galician Shadows" and they act as his emotional response to the visit. Craigie Horsfield says: "Robert Koenig recognised that the relationship of history, tradition and myth was a profoundly complex one having the very greatest significance for the present, Koenig's work should be seen in the context of Europe today; the place in which we live; the context of the struggle of identity and the community; of myth and of history."
Koenig's latest and ongoing project is called "Odyssey" (Polish title: "Dziady"). It is his attempt to call up his Polish 'ancestral ghosts' by carving a large group of male and female figures, each 2.5m tall, out of lime trees which grew in his mother's home village of Dominikowice in South East Poland. These trees bore witness to the many dramatic events that shaped the lives of people over the last 100 years. .An important part of this project is the placing of the whole group in various locations in the town, village and in the landscape, in places of significance to family history. Photographs are taken in every location. They are framed and form part of the exhibition of the project. In 2006 Odyssey was transported to the UK . It was a visual arts prizewinner at the Brighton Festival in that year. The project is currently touring the great cathedrals of Britain including, Chichester, Rochester, Salisbury and York Minster.
Robert Koenig created the Odyssey project over 4 long visits to Poland. Odyssey is the most important project of his career where many thoughts, ideas, techniques, concepts have come together into one monumental statement.
Robert Koenig has made many visits to Poland over the past 30 years and whilst his work was not directly influenced by these visits he has nevertheless found many echoes, a certain sensibility, and an understanding and tradition for working wood which he found lacking elsewhere. Robert Koenig sees these journeys as a way of uncovering 'ancient memories'.