Ernst Barlach (1870-1938): 'Der Buchleser' (The Book Reader), brown patinated bronze, ed. 820/980, foundry mark 'Ars Mundi'

拍品描述

Ernst Barlach (1870-1938): 'Der Buchleser' (The Book Reader), brown patinated bronze, ed. 820/980, foundry mark 'Ars Mundi' H 24,5 cm This bronze sculpture is a smaller and later cast of 'The Book Reader' by Ernest Barlach from 1936, of which a copy is preserved in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The sculpture is a defiant rebellion against the hardships of the time and an invocation of humanity. In 1935, the volume 'Drawings', published by Reinhard Piper in close consultation with Barlach, appeared. The introductory panel is the drawing 'The Reader' from 1922. On March 24, 1936, the Bavarian Political Police confiscated the book. In his letter of protest to Joseph Goebbels, Barlach mentioned the drawing: "It is impossible that, for example, drawings such as [...] Reader, Violinist [...] and other similar ones, namely depictions of purely human and timeless conditions, should provoke public protection from them". The Barlach scholar Elmar Jansen concluded: “Thus, it can be considered certain that Barlach took up the idea of the present sculpture in connection with the confiscation of the volume 'Drawings' and conceived the 'The Book Reader' as an attempt to counter the imposed defamation with his will to self-assertion.” The motif of the absorbed and concentrated reader had long been present in Barlach's work. In 1916, the artist created a lithograph of a reader for the graphic edition 'Der Bildermann', conceived by Paul Cassirer and Leo Kestenberg, and inscribed the following on the sheet: "He to whom time is like eternity and eternity like time, is freed from all suffering (Jacob Böhme)." (link)

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