Franz Xaver Messerschmidt - striking head, Deliberate Prankster

The deliberate prankster belongs to the great collection of Franz Xaver Messerschmidts character heads. The character heads today belong to the most popular work of Messerschmidt and the head is made of 100% bronze and a real eye-catcher. The whole collection of character heads includes over 52 heads with bizarre facial expressions. Only a few wrinkles make this face look kind of bizarre and abnormal. The great face with its kind of funny facial expression is signed on its backside with "Xaver Messerschmidt".

As all of the bronze products in our shop, this exhibit is hand-cast in our own foundry and subject to our strict quality inspections throughout the entire process of fabrication. All of our sculptures are exclusively compounded with the help of lost-wax casting.

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Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783) was German-Austrian painter and sculptor most known for his series of canonical grimaces sculptures. Messerschmidt’s character heads were inspired by the mysterious condition that forced the artist to leave the Vienna Academy of Arts. The undiagnosed digestive illness that caused Messerschmidt so much pain is today believed to have been Crohn’s disease. At one point, he came up with a series of pinches he would apply to his right lower rib in order to take his mind off the pain. Looking in the mirror while he was applying his pinches, and seeing his facial expressions, Messerschmidt decided to immortalize his pain in a series of sculptures. Thus, in 1781 Franz Xaver Messerschmidt started working on his famous character heads, using himself as a model.