GERHARD MARCKS (1889 Berlin - 1981 Burgbrohl/Eifel)... Lot 454

GERHARD MARCKS (1889 Berlin - 1981 Burgbrohl/Eifel) "Fortuna with Large Cloth". Original title bronze, dark patinated,1960. artist's signet ("Phönix"). Round foundry stamp "SCHMÄKE DÜSSELDORF", numbered 8/8. Wvz. Rudloff 749. 1919-1924 Marcks worked as a master at the Bauhaus, 1933 he lost his teaching position at the Burg Giebichenstein; his works were partly ostracized as "degenerate" during the time of National Socialism. In 1945 Marcks was appointed to the Landeskunstschule Hamburg, and from 1950 he worked as a freelance artist in Cologne and in the Eifel. This contemplative sculpture, which also deals with the relationship between body and garment, is characteristic of the oeuvre of this important German sculptor of Classical Modernism. His standing, reclining or seated nude figures, compressed to the essentials of form and expression, show girls or young women in their natural movements and postures; never do his stylized figures appear heroic or pathetic, instead they reflect in a supra-temporal way general human basic moods, sometimes also a certain behaviorality. H. 67,5 cm. A comparative example is in the collection of the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen (Inv.-Nr. 157/71) Dark patinated bronze, 1960. Artist's sign and foundry stamp, numbered 8/8.