Gerhard Marcks Lot n° 27

Gerhard Marcks Swimmer II 1938/1952 Bronze sculpture. Height 167.2 cm. With the artist's signature on the front right of the plinth and the foundry stamp "H. NOACK BERLIN" on the back left. One of more than 4 examples; posthumous casting. - With beautiful dark brown patina. - The right front thigh with a few punctiform abrasions. Rudloff 354; Marcks, Werk-Tagebuch Gips/Bronze 197 Provenance Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired directly from the artist) Exhibitions Cf. inter alia Berlin 1938 (Galerie Buchholz), Bildhauerkunst, cat. No. 18 with illustration of the plaster; Hamburg 1940 (Kunstverein), Deutsche Bildhauer der Gegenwart, Cat. No. 113; Hanover 1949 (Kestner-Gesellschaft), Gerhard Marcks, cat. No. 18; Kassel 1955 (Dokumenta I), cat. No. 385; Cologne/Berlin/Bremen 1989/1990 (Josef Haubrich-Kunsthalle/Nationalgalerie/Gerhard Marcks-Haus), Gerhard Marcks 1889-1981. retrospective, cat. No. 202, with color illus. p. 201; Jena 2004 (Galerie im Stadtmuseum), Gerhard Marcks. Zwischen Bauhaus und Dornburger Atelier, cat. No. I/25, with color illus. Literature Adolf Rieth, Gerhard Marcks, Recklinghausen 1959, p. 17; Jutta Schmidt, Einige Gedanken zur realistischen Plastik des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Bildende Kunst, 1968, vol. 9, with illus. p. 471; Ursula Frenzel, Gerhard Marcks 1889-1981, Briefe und Werke, Munich 1988, p. 100; Gerhard Marcks-Stiftung (ed.), Gerhard Marcks und die Antike, Bremen 1993, unpag. with three full-page illustrations Gerhard Marcks based "Swimmer II" on the portrait of his daughter Brigitte, born in 1916. In 1952, the artist once again made minor changes to the hairstyle of the 1938 sculpture, which shows Brigitte life-size and with trained, pronounced muscles. He used his second daughter Ute, born in 1921, as a model. The important sculpture "Swimmer II" - a copy of which can be found in the Berlin National Gallery and another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld - illustrates Marcks' reception of classical and archaic antiquity, implemented in his individual 'signature'. In the personal portrait, it shows the universally valid, timeless depiction of the contemplative concentration that precedes every sporting activity. "In the constants of standing, sitting, crouching and lying down, he traced the harmonies of an outer and inner movement, explored the interplay and euphony of a respective canon of forms, explored the rhythm of a line, volume and axis progression. Especially in the female nude, he was concerned with one thing above all: beauty." (Martina Rudloff, Venus Urania has no name, in: Gerhard Marcks-Stiftung 1993, op.cit., p. 101)