Vente: 525 / Evening Sale 10 décembre 2021 à Munich Lot 219

 

219
Karl Hartung
Organische Form, 1949.
Bronze with greenish brown patina
Estimation:
€ 50,000 / $ 54,000
Résultat:
€ 125,000 / $ 135,000

( frais d'adjudication compris)
Organische Form. 1949.
Bronze with greenish brown patina.
Krause 427. With the name and the special character on one of the platforms. With the foundry mark "W. Geisler Berlin" on the side. 26.2 x 67.5 x 27 cm (10.3 x 26.5 x 10.6 in).
Cast by Willy Geisler, Berlin. [CH].
• Lifetime cast.
• On display at the 5th São Paulo Biennial (1959).
• Copies of this work were part of the grand retrospectives at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (1952) and the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover (1953)
• Inspired by nature, this work boasts a timeless beauty rendered in a reduced style.
• Part of a group of works made around 1949 in which Hartung attained an own free style that was entirely detached from figuration
.

We are grateful to the Estate Karl Hartung for the kind expert advice.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Varese/Italy.
Private collection Southern Germany.

EXHIBITION: (each presumably a different cast, some plaster cast):
Karl Hartung. Aus der Werkstatt eines Bildhauers, Galerie Springer, Berlin, from November 5, 1949.
Karl Hartung, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, September 2 - October 12, 1952, cat. no. 81 (with illu.).
Karl Hartung, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, May 28 - June 28, 1953, later Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum, Hagen, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Bremer Kunsthalle, Kölner Kunstverein et al, cat. no. 40.
Deutsche Bildhauer, Städtisches Museum, Wuppertal, March 1955, cat. no. 96.
Deutsche Kleinplastik der Gegenwart, Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim, September 12 - October 12, 1958, cat. no. 20.
5th Biennial, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, 1959, cat. no. 2.
Galerie Springer - Berlin 1948-1998, 51. Art Cologne, Cologne, April 25 - April 29, 2017, Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels e.V. ZADIK, Cologne, May 8 - September 1, 2017.



The drafts for the work offered here were created during an artistically eventful and successful period in the artist's life towards the end of the 1940s, Shortly after the end of the war he eventually realized his artistic breakthrough. The first solo exhibitions of his work took place in the Galerie Gerd Rosen (1946 and 1948) and at Galerie Springer in Berlin. In 1949 Hartung took part in the first major exhibition of the international artists' association "CoBrA", founded in 1948, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1953 the Kestner Society in Hanover honored him with a first grand museum retrospective, in which a copy of the bronze offered here was also shown. Over those years Hartung was also very active in art and cultural politics. Together with Jeanne Mammen and others he founded the artist group "Zone 5". Along with Karl Hofer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Bernhard Heiliger and others he was co-founder of the "Berliner Neue Gruppe" and was committed to the re-establishment of the ‘Deutschen Künstlerbund‘ (German Artist Association), which had been suspended by the National Socialists in 1936. Today Karl Hartung is one of the key figures of mid 20th century sculpting in German.
At the beginning of his artistic career the artist was intensively occupied with the works of antiquity, in particular with ancient Greek sculpture. From the 1930s onwards, Hartung's art underwent change as he turned away from naturalistic and realistic sculpting. Hartung created some entirely abstract works and also made his figurative works subject to a greater degree of abstraction. The human, primarily the female figure, its forms and physiognomy remained the major, all-encompassing theme of his oeuvre. The radical reduction and high degree of abstraction in some of his works is extraordinary at this point in time. After the artist started working on a group of female nudes in the late 1940s, he later finally devoted himself to his "vegetative", "free" or "organic forms" through which he finally crossed the border to abstraction and attained his very own, free signature style. The greenish patinated bronze offered here also shows no imitations of nature, no hints at a female physiognomy. Nature merely serves as a source of inspiration here: With an "Organische Form" reminiscent of roots and branches or a bone, Hartung creates a subtly balanced interplay of open and closed, as well as softly modulated and strongly rounded forms. Despite its solidity and the material‘s weight, the bronze emanates an elegant, graceful and harmonious balance. The uneven, greenish dark-brown patina also evokes a certain liveliness and emphasizes the natural, organic character of the curved bronze. The present work thus occupies a particularly important position in the artist's oeuvre, because Hartung succeeded in creating a non-representational, autonomous structure, a universally valid form of timeless beauty. According to his own conviction, he made the essential, the universal of man visible as part of creation with the help of organic forms. With the development of this very personal abstraction, Karl Hartung established himself alongside contemporary luminaries such as Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore and is one of the most important representative of European sculpting of the later 20th century. [CH]



219
Karl Hartung
Organische Form, 1949.
Bronze with greenish brown patina
Estimation:
€ 50,000 / $ 54,000
Résultat:
€ 125,000 / $ 135,000

( frais d'adjudication compris)