Franz Barwig the Elder was one of Austria’s most important and successful sculptors of his time. Barwig’s works were exhibited internationally and purchased by major European museums early on. Barwig’s characteristic animal sculptures reveal him as a pioneer of Art Deco; his nudes returned to a classical ideal of form expressed in a modern idiom.
After resigning as professor at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, Franz Barwig the Elder committed suicide at the age of sixty-three.