The Sculpture of Hugo Robus

Abstract

TO create, an artist must have beside his craftsmanship two things: an intimate knowledge of man's striving to understand and build something out of life, and some retiring point from which he views that strife and from which he creates something new out of his knowledge. Hugo Robus has retired into a very modern cynicism which has its bitterness and its human tolerance and which is inclined to make something of a joke out of the whole business. His own definition of a cynic is one who loves mankind so well that he wishes to free it from obnoxious self-imposed limitations. His fascination lies in this paradox—his intense emotional feeling for life and his cynicism. Once only, perhaps, does he give full rein to the emotional intensity which is an undercurrent in his other work, in the Invocation, an almost unendurable and intangible demand of the human soul for something it requires but cannot name. At the other pole stands Gossip.