Postcard from Germany

Jonathan Borofsky, The Walking Man, 1995, Munich



The Walking Man, completed in 1995, stands in front of the new Munich Re insurance company headquarters on the Leopoldstrasse in Munich. The sculpture has been situated so that people end up walking through the legs of the figure to enter and leave the building.

This 56 foot tall sculpture was made in sections at the La Paloma factory in Sun Valley, California. The sections were then transported to Munich where we spent five weeks bringing the parts together. The sculpture has a steel inner structure and a fiberglass outer shell. In fact, there is a steel staircase inside the upper body of the figure which allowed us to assemble the final sections of the sculpture from the inside. Before the interior of the sculpture was completely sealed off, we placed a metal time capsule inside the sculpture with written statements from both the workers who built the sculpture, as well as the workers at Munich Re.

Jonathan Borofsky (born 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American artist who lives and works in Maine.

He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in 1964, after which he continued his studies at France's Ecole de Fontainebleau and received his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in 1966. In the 1960's, Mr. Borofsky's art sought to interconnect minimalism and pop art.

On May 21, 2006, Mr. Borofsky received an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon, his alma mater.

Jonathan Borofsky's most famous works, at least among the general public, are his Hammering Man sculptures. "Hammering Men" have been installed in various cities around the world. The largest Hammering Man is in Frankfurt, Germany and the second largest is in Seattle, Washington. Other Hammering Men are in New York City, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Basel, Seoul, and Washington, D.C..

In May 2006, Mr. Borofsky's "Walking to the Sky" was permanently installed on the campus of Carnegie Mellon near the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Morewood Avenue. The piece was temporarily installed at Rockefeller Center during the fall of 2004 and in 2005 at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas.

Jonathan Borofsky
borofsky.com