Model for FIGUR, 1976, oak, h. 223 cm (today in the collection: Heinrich Vetter, Mannheim)

Inspired by Piet Mondrian and the "De Stijl" movement, Hans Steinbrenner discovered the cube as his most important design element in the early 1960s. In his lifelong search for the archetypal form, he abandoned figurative formal inventions and from then on composed block-like abstractions. The year 1969 marked a radical change in Steinbrenner's sculptural work. His cubic formations had condensed to the point where their compositional capacity seemed exhausted. A new artistic orientation took place under the lifelong fascination for the connection between planned construction and intuitive working methods in the work of Otto Freundlich and his "Dynamic Elementarism". From then on, Steinbrenner concentrated more on geometric realizations, in which he contrasts the size and orientation of the rectangular formations formed from the material and interlocks them around a hidden central axis. As a result, the cube-like compact "compositions" are increasingly replaced by stele-like "figures" oriented to the vertical - a development that reaches its peak in the 1970s and 1980s. The division of the blocks, typical of his sculptures, became more animated and free. From now on, the tension between sculptural volume and empty space comes to bear even more consistently, as can be seen in his figure created in 1976.