Skulpturenpark Köln

Metal sculptor Alf Lechner (b.1925 in Munich d. in Dollnstein) was serving in the Navy and as a POW before he studied painting under Alf Bachmann (1945-48) and completed an apprenticeship as a metal-worker. Until 1960 he was active as a painter, graphic artist, designer and worker in steel. Lechner's œuvre has developed a constantly changing range of steel sculptures, his central concern being to transcend the material by means of reduction to basic geometric forms, compression, opening up and different surface treatments. In 1999 the artist set up the Lechner Foundation; a museum of the same name with works of related artists, too, opened a year later in Ingolstadt.