Skulpturenpark Köln

The larger-than-life-size statue Clitunno belongs like Ganymed, Titan, Hirte, St.Sebastian, Apollo and Prometheus to a series of bronzes which Lüpertz  made between 1985 and 1995 as the Mythical Seven. Clitunno, who here seems rather coarse-featured and clumsy, is the God of the spring and the river at Spoleto. The moment captured in the sculpture shows the God as he climbs out of the river - with his feet still caught in the water and silt - into the sphere of mankind, with one finger of his right hand, the archetypal tool per se, curled in triumph. The crudely tooled surface of the God makes him look as if he was covered with a thick layer of mud, so that we can only guess at his exact features. As in others of Lüpertz's sculptures, it is not the ideal forms of classical antiquity that prevail here, but rather the more spiritually orientated physiognomy of the Greek archaic.