Dancing couple Franz Hagenauer ca. 1985

Throughout his life, Franz Hagenauer regarded himself first and foremost as a sculptor. From an early age, he developed a distinctive and highly stylized formal language. Through clarity of reduction and geometric precision, he created an impressive variety of sculptures in which the human body is continually reinterpreted through expressive poses.

The present work depicts a dancing couple in a dynamic lift. The male dancer raises his arms with strength and grace, supporting a woman who appears to float effortlessly above him, her body extending outward in elegant tension. The delicate interplay of movement, perfect balance, and harmonious line imbues the composition with exceptional lightness and poise.
Hagenauer distills the figures to their essence, stylized, clearly contoured, and free from superfluous detail. Through this formal simplification, he directs the viewer’s attention to the rhythmic relationship between the two figures and the subtle dialogue between motion and stillness.

A gently curving band that winds around the female figure emphasizes the sense of movement and connection between the pair. Resting on a cast base whose design subtly evokes organic, plant-like forms, the precisely hand-hammered figures find both balance and grounding, anchoring their dance within space.
This powerful synthesis of reduction, dynamism, and formal precision vividly illustrates Hagenauer’s unmistakable artistic signature and the modern design language of the Werkstätte Hagenauer.