Josef (Sepp) Wyss was born in 1922 in Switzerland, to a Swiss mother and Austrian father.
From 1946 to 1950 he studied at the School of Art in St. Gallen, and dealt mainly with the creation of stone embossments. In 1952 he discovered his vocation as a sculptor, and began to sculpt for public institutions such as schools, churches, community centers and hospitals.
Wyss’s artistic works are quite diverse and vary from figurative sculpture to geometric abstract sculpture. However, his art is very personal and deals with the relationship between man and woman, life and death, and was influenced by archaic and prehistoric art. Some wrote that his works refer to ancient monuments representing goddesses.
His works are extremely expressive and mostly exhibit an obsessive, meticulous treatment of the stone.
Wyss participated in several international sculpture symposia, including the first and second symposia in St. Margarethen in Austria, where he met Kosso Eloul. His works are displayed in many public places in Switzerland.
Wyss died in 2005 in Zurich, Switzerland.
At the top of the ridge, descending from the north, before the cliff, stands the enigmatic sculpture by Josef Wyss.
Made of black basalt, the piece consists of two completely abstract sentinels embracing each other.
It is difficult to determine whether the two elements face each other in a gesture of erotic love, or whether they are gesturing in reverence toward the sublime landscape of the crater, revealed below them in all its glory.
The basalt stone is polished smooth and almost shines. Each of the two body shapes are carved into a precise geometric shape, as if their sides were designed with a ruler.
The tension between the deeply severed hard, black stone, and the almost erotic embrace between the two bodies, creates an impression that there is a secret, which the visitor himself is left to decipher.
