192
155 Gerda Frömel (1931-1975)
Eve
Bronze, 49.5cm high (19½”)
Signed with initials and dated 1974
Provenance: Purchased through Seán Ó Criadáin, 1977, by John P. Reihill, Deepwell,
Blackrock, Co. Dublin
The attenuated figure of
Eve
while reminiscent of Giacommetti’s bronze figures more
strongly recalls a Gothic Mary Magdalene and, perhaps is a reference to late medie-
val German sculpture widely found on churches in southern German towns. Having
studied in Munich, Frömel could not have avoided being exposed to such influences.
Gerda Frömel was born in Schonberg in Czechoslovakia in 1931. She studied sculp-
ture first at Stuttgart where she was awarded the academy scholarship in 1949 and
then in Darmstadt and Munich. Not wishing to return to her own country, she came
to Ireland in 1956 and settled here with her German husbandWerner Schurmann who
was himself an able sculptor before turning to opera singing as a career. Gerda Frömel
brought the inheritance of a dual tradition to bear on all the work that she created in
this country and it was here that all of her mature work was inspired. She was forty-five
and the mother of four boys when, tragically, she lost her life in a drowning accident.
When she first arrived in Ireland, Frömel began to contribute to various group shows,
including the
Irish Exhibition of Living Art
. She worked initially in marble, onyx, slate
or alabaster, but later also in bronze, aluminium and gold.
She excelled as both a carver and a modeller and was a fastidious craftsman, devoted to
finish and technical perfection as the delicacy of her work suggests. One of her main
concerns was with the intrinsic nature of the materials with which she worked. Very
versatile, Frömel was able to slip from abstract to representational and from delicate,
softly modelled or carved heads and figures to austere, almost bare pieces. She was
particularly fascinated with circular, oval and disc-shaped forms.
Latterly, she had expressed the desire to further explore the challenge of large scale
pieces and had begun to devote much time to large public commissions.
In 1962 she won the sculpture prize in the Irish Church Art Exhibition and the fol-
lowing year was awarded an Arts Council scholarship for sculpture. She had her first
one-man show in Dublin in 1964. In 1970 she won the Waterford Glass Company
Award at the Oireachtais. She won many other awards and received commissions from
both Ireland and Germany including one for the P.J. Carroll building in Dundalk and
the Regional Technical College in Galway.
€5,000 - 7,000
