Stout State University Sports and Fitness Center, 1966

MENOMONIE (August 19, 2020) - The sculpture on the east wall of the Sports and Fitness Center has caused students over the past 50-plus years to pause and take a look at it. After studying it, the sculpture appears to be a football player getting ready to catch a ball.

But, like any art form, the sculpture can be more than that, according to the artist who created the sculpture - Wolfram Niessen. 

Niessen, a Stout State University art instructor at the time, designed the all-aluminum sculpture to be attached to the building in 1966, two years after the 1964 completion of what was then called the Health and Physical Education Center.

The following is a Sept. 9, 1966, article from the The Stoutonia, the school newspaper, outlining Niessen's work on the project and what his vision of the project was.

ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENT FOR STOUT FIELDHOUSE (Sept. 9, 1966, The Stoutonia)

In designing an image of athletic achievement, a Stout State University faculty sculptor instructor captured the integral spirit of athletics striving throughout the entire university in his latest work for the University's Health and Physical Education Center. 

 

Wolfram Niessen, assistant professor of art and sculpture, has designed and constructed a 36-foot by 21-foot piece of sculpture in recognition of Stout's athletic achievement this past year. 

 At the suggestion of president William J. Micheels, Niessen designed a figure that was to represent the Stout athletic teams – the Blue Devils; however, the artist feels that his aluminum sculpture can be interpreted in many ways. 

 

"The essence of the idea is to convey the spirit of the university, whether an individual or a team," Niessen told the student newspaper The Stoutonia. "The design represents a figure. He could be a football player, a man in space or a man reaching and receiving at the university. It could also be a Blue Devil, due to the two horn-like projections on the "head," but they all culminate in the explicit urge of reaching and receiving." 

 

Wolfram Niessen assembles the sculpture that will be affixed to the health and physical education building

Wolfram Niessen works on the sculpture that would hang on the east side of the Sports and Fitness Center.  

The artist chose to carry out his two-dimensional design with sheet aluminum to complement the new health and physical education center on which the complete work is mounted. 

 

"The brick wall of the physical education center is such a covering over a steel skeleton that the wall itself has not much body compared to the entire building structure. Since the weight is relatively light," said Niessen, "the open spaced aluminum sheet sculpture work is a most fitting enhancement as the brick shines through the open design." 

 

The four-piece sculpture, completely hand-worked by Niessen, is mounted six inches from the east wall of the physical education building, facing the athletic field. 

The German-born Niessen has also taught drawing and sculpture at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He has exhibited three or more works at Kunsthalle, and Kustveriese, Schloss, Manheim, Germany; Bilkende Hande, Stuttgardt, Germany; Franfurt, Germany; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada. Niessen taught three years at Stout, from 1965-68.