Born in 1946 in Ortisei, Val Gardena, Italy.

“Wilhelm Senoner’s human figures do not claim to give answers to fundamental questions. They put the image of men on a pedestal, not to create more distance, but to increase their visibility. The rough surface is embellished by colour, which mainly allows a positivist view. It is not about criticism or reforming the world, but about accepting what it is. In Senoner’s figurative world it counts the moulded existence, the moving figure. Everything is moving, panta rhei.” Leo Andergassen

Between 1960 and 1965 Wilhelm Senoner attended the Institute of Art in Ortisei and from 1965 to 1976 he worked as an apprentice with established local sculptors. In 1977 he began his successful artistic career characterized by solo and collective exhibitions both in Italy and Europe. After 2000 the artist started an independent journey where the essential forms of nature and the human figures in space became the focus of his research.

The artistic language of Wilhelm Senoner is constantly evolving: the artist’s interests range from Gothic sculpture to the great masters of the early German Renaissance and contemporary artists such as Alberto Giacometti and Carlo Carrà. Over the years Wilhelm Senoner abandoned the naturalistic rendering of polished wood, preferring instead its raw soul and the contrasts of light and shadow. The rough surfaces and the angular lines of Senoner’s works reveal the close connection with the mountains, his native land, and the nature that more than anything fascinates and inspires him.

Center of his artistic research are the individual and the human condition, rendered through mainly large-scale works: they are human types captured in their essentiality, symbolic creatures with firm forms, anchored to the ground, or dynamic, in precarious balance, that express a dignified view of humanity.