An untitled Tony Cragg work at Wuppertal

Plenty of prominent modern sculptors have relished their ability to acquire land and install work in congenial outdoor locations. Henry Moore, who came to believe that “sculpture is an art of the open air”, placed large-scale pieces in the grounds of his house in rural Hertfordshire. And Moore’s finest American contemporary David Smith acquired a farm at Bolton Landing, New York, where he ceaselessly experimented with placing his sculpture in the countryside.

But neither Moore nor Smith went as far as British sculptor Tony Cragg. Now in his 60th year, he has opened a 30-acre Sculpture Park in Wuppertal, the German city where he has lived since 1977 – though he had not planned to stay longer than a year. Situated on a steep hill at the centre of this old industrial city, it commands a panoramic view of the Rhineland below. Though this park is so close to the city’s heart, its clusters of ancient oaks and ashes made me think of their origins as a prehistoric forest.

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The site had been empty for a quarter of a century, so Cragg was confronted with a daunting amount of renovation. Not that he had any hesitation in restoring the Villa Waldfrieden, a remarkable structure on the site built by Kurt Herberts in the late 1940s, a flowing and organic building whose strong sculptural presence was inspired by the ideas of the ethical individualist Rudolf Steiner. Though not open to the public, this now pristine villa can be savoured by visitors from a distance.

At intervals throughout the park, Cragg has installed 19 of his own works. Here, they enter into a dialogue with their fertile setting. He has moved a long way from the sculpture that established his reputation 30 years ago. Back then, showing at the Lisson Gallery in London with other young sculptors such as Richard Deacon, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow, he focused on plastic fragments salvaged from rubbish dumps and blighted, litter-strewn areas. The unpredictable new meanings Cragg gave this discarded material won him the Turner Prize in 1988.

Since then, he has moved away from plastic detritus to develop a wider reputation for sculpture made of materials as diverse as glass, steel, brass, bronze, marble and polystyrene. At first, they often looked abstract as the restless forms twist, shoot, rise and plummet in a dizzying number of diverse directions. Close by, details suggestive of figures and faces, often blurred, seem forever caught in motion.

The interconnection between human forms and the natural world can be felt everywhere in Cragg’s sculpture, and also helps to explain why he is at pains to nurture new growth in the park. More than 300 trees have been planted, while dying ones are deliberately left to rot in the earth and give it sustenance.

All the same, Cragg did not hesitate to erect a gleaming glass-walled gallery at one end of the park. Uncompromisingly modernist, it nevertheless looks at home here. It is reserved for temporary exhibitions by sculptors. Mario Merz was the first artist to be given a show and his stone igloos appeared completely in accord with their setting. More recently, works by Eduardo Chillida, whose masterpiece is a three-part steel piece attached to the rocks in his native San Sebastian, occupied the gallery. Whether made of metal or stone, these seemingly abstract images likewise succeeded in chiming with the natural forms growing on every side. Chillida knows how to make three-dimensional work challenge the onlooker. So does Cragg, and his Wuppertal Park deserves to be explored by everyone who, like Henry Moore, enjoys discovering sculpture in an ever-changing outdoor setting.

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Details

Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Hirschstrasse 12, Wuppertal, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)202 551 350
www.skulpturenparkwaldfrieden.de