Now in its 125th year, the Noack sculpture foundry is one of the five most important bronze foundries in the world. The long-established company has created such famous monuments as the Quadriga for the Brandenburg Gate and St. George for the dome of the Kremlin as monumental sculptures. In addition, almost all German modernism was cast here and the British sculptor Henry Moore had around 1,000 large sculptures cast here after the war.
More recently, important artists such as ZERO founder Heinz Mack and Neo-Dadaist Jonathan Meese have had their entire sculptural oeuvre cast in bronze here, just as international artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Rosemarie Trockel, Tony Cragg, Nicole Eisenman, Georg Baselitz, Jonathan Meese, Bunny Rogers, Rainer Fetting and many others have placed their trust in the company with their production.
Hardly any other German company has ever been so closely linked to the international art market and helped shape art history as the owner-managed Berlin-based company, now in its fourth generation. The company's turnover has developed just as steadily and in recent years the turnover of Bildgießerei Hermann Noack GmbH + Co KG has recorded an almost constant increase in turnover of around 6 percent with 2.8 million (2018), 3.0 million (2019), 3.2 million (2020), 3.2 million (2021), which was generated on the 10,000 square meter property with the foundry on 5,000 square meters with around 40 skilled workers in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Noack not only produced, but also delivered and erected Europe's largest bronze sculpture. The herd of 14 bronze bulls weighs 80 tons and is a sculpture by the now 95-year-old Austrian sculptor Jos Pirkner. The sculpture, which is more than 20 meters long, was created in collaboration with Noack between 2009 and 2014 for the Red Bull headquarters in Fuschl am See, Austria.
Many of the works produced by Noack can be found today in the most important international museums and private collections, such as the entire artistic oeuvre in bronze of the Fluxus artist Joseph Beuys, whose bronze-aluminum cast environment "Blitzschlag mit Lichtschein auf Hirsch" from 1983 was sold in its entirety to the Tate Modern in London, the MMK Frankfurt, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Sustainable transformation remains a key focus for the company's development. This includes climate-friendly considerations as well as material procurement geared towards sustainability. However, the company is also finding answers to global crises such as the shortage of raw materials or armed conflicts with an impact on the energy and transportation industry. The company is currently converting its ovens from gas to electric at great expense in order to remain competitive.
While the development up to the Second World War brought the company around 99 percent male customers, the tide has turned since the war, with the result that Noack's customers are now almost equally represented. The traditional company works more than 90 percent in the B2B sector, with major customers being artists and gallery owners.
"Our philosophy is quality. We get to the heart of many things for the artist. We can give the pieces individuality and personality. That is our signature. That's where most people fail. Just making a simple bronze cast is just as inadequate today as it was in the days of my predecessors," says Hermann Noack about the secret of his success.
Next Friday, November 11, the anniversary will be celebrated with 800 invited guests from the worlds of culture, society, politics and business.To mark the occasion, the workshop gallery will open a retrospective of 125 years of international sculpture from modernism to the present day with around 50 museum pieces that were once cast at Noack.
We show sculptures by:
Alexander Archipenko, Kenneth Armitage, Ernst Barlach, Georg Baselitz, Rudolf Belling, Hermann Blumenthal, Kristian Blystad, Anna Bogoushevskaia, Lynn Chadwick, Tony Cragg, Per Dybvig, Elmgreen & Dragset, Rainer Fetting, Fotis, August Gaul, O.H. Hajek, Bernhard Heiliger, Uwe Henneken, Leiko Ikemura, Michael Johansson, Georg Kolbe, Fritz Klimsch, Rainer Kriester, Jone Kvie, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Heinz Mack, Gerhard Marcks, Ewald Matare, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, Vera Röhm, Rolf Sachs, Arie van Selm, Renee Sintenis, Tal R, Dolores Zinny & Juan Maidagan
The exhibition "125 Years of Noack" will be on display until February 3, 2023 - we look forward to your visit!
Opening hours of the gallery:
Mo-Fr
12-5 pm
From 22.12. - 1.1. the gallery remains closed!
We will be back for you on Monday, January 2nd during the usual opening hours.
To mark the anniversary, DISTANZ-Verlag has published a 208-page monograph in English and German on the Noack institution, which you can purchase from us or in bookshops for 48 euros.