Summary
Georg Malin was born into a Catholic craftsman’s family in
Mauren/Liechtenstein on 8 February, 1926. Being both a histo-
rian and an artist he has succeeded in establishing himself as a
free-lance sculptor since 1955. Malin’s work is both extensive
and wide-ranging, and many private art lovers and public
experts have shown their keen interest.
Concentrating upon Malin’s artistic work, its constant develop-
ment is particularly remarkable, especially the way he increas-
ingly achieved a combination of sound craftsmanship and
intense expressiveness. Realized in the mid fifties, his first
sculptural works are portraits, representational figures and
abstract compositions. This range of themes indicates Malin’s
search for an autonomous mode of artistic language and,
moreover, his gradual detachment from former academic
models such as Auguste Rodin, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle and
Aristide Maillol. Important further impacts on Malin’s own crea
tiveness originate from Brancusi’s sculptures — works which
are reduced to their archetypal shapes —, from Laurens’
Amphion group, as well as from Henry Moore’s and Jean Arp’s
radically simple yet formally perfect plastic art. Also the con-
temporary Swiss artists Alberto Giacometti, Max Bill and Albert
Schilling have been visually stimulating influences.
Apart from his occupation with sacral art, an area in which Malin
has been distinguishing himself ever since the sixties, there is
one basic topic he has pursued in greater detail and to which
he has turned back time and again: growth and dying, the
budding, maturing and fading of life — and its rebirth. In this
period the sculptor’s concept of space and body becomes
transparent and simple in a new way. He chiefly works with
steel, and with bronze, which he begins to polish intensively.
Around 1970, a whole range of various compositions in bronze
and some smaller works in steel are thus made, all arising from
a free impulse. These will be of primary importance for the
creation as well as for the shaping of the more spacious Sculp-
tures commissioned in the following decade. Be it in a more
oublic environment or in a sacred building, Malin’s predomi-