Ernst Fuchs. (1930 Vienna - 2015 ibid.) "Queen Esther". Original title Bronze, brown patina, 1972, foundry mark of the Schmäke foundry, Düsseldorf. Monumental, imaginative bronze sculpture by the Viennese artist, one of the largest sculptures ever created by Fuchs. On a fitting plinth, Fuchs has depicted the biblical "Queen Esther" as a nude figure, her arms covered with a snake and a flower stalk raised diagonally at her sides, her hair decorated with snails and piled up like a helmet. The voluminously protruding hips and the swelling, plump, spherical breasts are symbols of primal, archaic fertility and femininity, as they are known both from the Palaeolithic Age and from prehistoric and early historical, Hindu and Buddhist cultures, with which Fuchs was intensively involved. In the same spirit, Fuchs chose the attributes of the flower and the snake - ambivalent, ambiguous symbols and primal symbols. In the Bible, the Jewish orphan Esther, the wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), becomes the saviour of her people, the Jews, through her negotiating skills. Later, Esther stood as one of the Nine Good Heroines in the iconographic series as a representative of Judaism. Since around 1967, Ernst Fuchs, himself of Jewish descent, had been working with the biblical figure of Esther as a major representative of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1973, Ernst Fuchs gave his friend Salvatore Dalí a cast of his "Queen Esther", now in the Salvador Dalí Theatre Museum in Figuraras/Spain. Further examples and versions can be found at the Villa Wagner in Vienna, acquired by Fuchs in 1972 (now the private Ernst Fuchs Museum), as well as in front of the former "Kunsthaus Dr Hans Hartl" in Freising. H. approx. 255 cm. Provenance: from the dissolution of an important private collection in North Rhine-Westphalia. Brown patinated bronze, 1972. foundry stamp of the Kunstgießerei Schmäke, Düsseldorf.