Abraham the Wanderer

From the 1950s onwards, Kirchner devoted himself to biblical stories and figures, with which he conveyed human messages beyond the religious sphere. With Abraham the Wanderer, Kirchner ties his frequently used motif of the wanderer to a central figure of three world religions. In the Old Testament, the wandering cattle breeder Abraham leads his people over 1,000 miles from the Gulf almost to Egypt at God’s command. Ibrahim is also considered an important prophet in Islam, and the pilgrimage to Mecca, among other things, is associated with him. Kirchner depicts Abraham in clothing that covers his entire body, as worn by desert pilgrims and nomads. The three feet protruding from the robe, with which Kirchner once again captures the motif of the three world religions, convey the impression of being on the move. The face concealed under the hood casts a hasty glance to the side before Abraham the Wanderer continues his journey. The inscription on the base, which Kirchner borrowed from Saint Augustine’s “Confessions”, the autobiographical reflections and descriptions of his wrong turns and aberrations, which was written around the year 400 AD, and which fluctuate between the confession of guilt and faith in the life of the church teacher, can be interpreted not only in the religious sense, but also in the secular sense of man’s wandering through life.