Volker Mixsa (1944-2016) was a German sculptor. That's the short introductory sentence in Wikipedia. He was born in Meiningen in southern Thuringia in 1944 and had lived in Dresden since 1962, where he completed his training as a toolmaker and worked for the blacksmith Karl Bergmann. Mixsa perfected his training in an evening course at the Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Walder Arnold and completed his studies with the master craftsman's examination.
Art and concrete - that is by no means a contradiction. After Einhart Grotegut, whose "concrete leaves" were used to create a calendar in 2008, Volker Mixsa, another artist recognised beyond the bounds of Dresden, has taken on this material. Volker Mixsa has made a name for himself with his stainless steel sculptures. They are located in public spaces - in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Bonn, among other places - and attract attention due to their lightness and variety of shapes: his wind chimes are playful eye-catchers.
In the previous Collaborative Research Centre 528, he worked with the new material carbon concrete and created sculptures that carry his unmistakable signature. He utilised the advantages of the material: the works he created are slender and elegant, airy and light - yet durable. The easy mouldability gave the artist complete freedom in finding forms. Mixsa used stainless steel for his moulds: they give the concrete a surface that is almost reminiscent of steel itself: smooth to look at and also a tactile experience!
The textile and carbon concrete art was created as part of the public relations work of the Collaborative Research Centre 528, whose funding by the German Research Foundation came to an end in June 2011 after twelve years of intensive and successful research work. A catalogue with numerous impressions was produced for the art project with Mixsa, which is available open access here.

One of his last significant projects was the redesign of the choir room of Dresden's "Weißer Hirsch" church, which he carried out together with the painter Gerda Lepke.

In 2016, Gürtler, the former Greifswald cathedral pastor, invited the blacksmith to the Decade of Peace. He originally planned to light a large forge fire on the cathedral meadow and demonstrate how ploughshares can be forged from long swords - something Mixsa had already done before during set-up times on the topic of peace. Sadly, this event could not take place as Mixsa was already ill at the time and died shortly afterwards.