The sculpture of Gottfried Bechtold (born 1947 in Hörbranz, Austria, lives in Vienna and Bregenz, Austria), entitled “Right Through the Heart,” was created in 2016 for an exhibition at Kunstraum Dornbirn in a historical factory hall. The site is of significance here, not just because the 16-meter steel girder needs space but also to embed the sculpture an industrial setting. Bechtold’s steel girder, the perfect symbol of progress and modernism, transfixes a pietà. The Christian motif of com-passion, of suffering with the other, as is embodied by the Sorrowful Mother—the copy of a work by Albert Bechtold (1885–1965), the artist’s great-uncle—is related to the modern world here. In addition, the work is also a strong reflection on sculpture itself—the interaction of abstraction and figuration—as well as a reference to Gottfried Bechtold’s personal family history in Vorarlberg.

evn collection, 2022