Joinery Still Life

As a member of the Foreign Legion, Otto Gutfreund took part in the fighting in northern France, but he was arrested in 1916 on suspicion of involvement in an alleged rebellion and spent almost three years in a French internment camp. In the first year, he did three sculptures from the material available in the camp. Only his abstracted figural composition Seated Woman (inv. No. P 4905) and Joinery Still Life have survived. In his assemblages of treated fragments of wooden crates reminiscent of architectural skeletons, he further developed the principles of his pre-war cubist work. When he returned to his native country, however, he did not pursue this trend in European sculpture.