Professor August Karl Eduard Kiss

Born 11 October 1802
Died 24 March 1865

Active: 1851 - 1854

Country of birth and death: Germany

Sculptor

He served an apprenticeship in the Paprotzan ironworks, after which he went to the Royal Smelting Works in Gleiwitz, where he learnt how to sculpt and engrave plaques and statuettes by means of iron-casting. After further training in the Brieg-Liegnitz iron foundry, he went to Berlin in 1822, studying at the Akademie der Künste and working at the Royal Iron Foundry under Leonhard Posch. From 1825 to 1840 Kiss worked with the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch; his first undertaking in Rauch's studio was to produce iron casts of scaled-down, mass-produced replicas after Rauch's famous statues of generals. Kiss also assisted Friedrich Tieck with the work for his monumental Horse Tamers for the roof of Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum in Berlin. On commission from Schinkel, Kiss completed a series of sculptural works, including the zinc figures for the Neue Wache on Unter den Linden (1842-46; in situ).

In 1830 Kiss became tutor in the bronze workshop of the Gewerbeinstitut. In 1837 he was made a member of the Berlin Akademie; and in 1841 he became a professor there. The first major work to make Kiss famous outside his own country was the Mounted Amazon Fighting a Panther for the entrance staircase of the Altes Museum (1837-41; erected 1842). Kiss was regarded as the best horse sculptor in Berlin. He worked almost exclusively in iron and bronze.

Citing this record

'Professor August Karl Eduard Kiss', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib5_1245858431, accessed 30 Mar 2023]