Mutter mit Kind

Interpersonal relationships and strong inner connection of people are recurring motifs of Angelika Kienberger's work.

An example for such "twosome pictures" is her early sculpture "Mother with Child" from 1995.

A birth in her closer family triggered her engagement to this timeless theme.

Kienberger chose the nude representation as the most natural and obvious shape for the internal relationship between a new mother and her newly born child. 

The shape of the nude symbolizes both the vulnerability of mother and child in the time of the childbed as well as the perfect "naturalness" of their interpersonal relationship. Thus, the seated figure of Kienberger's "mother" resembles an opening shell, which harbors at its core a vulnerable young being as well as it features it to her own affectionate glimps - the two figures unite the opposite poses of the "into one another" as well as the laterally reversed "vis-à-vis".

The artist's deep emotional sympathy is particularly contagious in this work and automatically transferres to the viewer.

"Mother with Child" is the first of three significant unique large-scale sculptures made of concrete, which the artist created in Emersacker in the years before the turn of the millennium.

Michael Daum, painter