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property of a private collection, California ERNST Ludwig KIRCHNER (1880-1938) Frauenkopf, Kopf E...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:800,000.00 - 1,200,000.00 USD
property of a private collection, California ERNST Ludwig KIRCHNER (1880-1938) Frauenkopf, Kopf E...
property of a private collection, California
ERNST Ludwig KIRCHNER
(1880-1938)
Frauenkopf, Kopf Erna
(Head of A Woman, Head of Erna)
hand-painted, carved oak wood
height: 14 in. ( 35.5 cm)
carved in 1913
Estimate: $800,000-1,200,000 <p>Provenance
Estate of the Artist
Roman Norbert Ketterer, Campione d'Italia, switzerland
Galeria Henze, Campione d'Italia, Switzerland
Acquired from the above by the present owner ca. 1979 <p>Exhibited
Campione d'Italia, Galerie Roman Norbert Ketterer, Ausstellung Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Graphik, 1971, no. 30 (illustrated)
Campione d'Italia, Galeria Henze, Moderne Kunst 18, 1978, no. 78 (illustrated in color)
Berlin, Nationalgalerie; Munich, Haus der Kunst; Cologne,
Museum Ludwig in der Kunsthalle, and Zurich, Kunsthaus, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: 1880-1938, November 29, 1979-August 10, 1980, p. 171, no. 147 (illustrated; as Frauenbüste and dated 1912)
Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture, November 7, 1981-January 3, 1982, pp. 200 and 202, no. 88 (illustrated and in color, p. 201)
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Cologne, Josef-Haubrich Kunsthalle, German Expressionist Sculpture, October 30, 1983-August 26, 1984, pp. 43, 115 and 122, no. 67 (illustrated, pp. 44, 124, 125 and on cover)
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Figures du Moderne, 1905-1914: Dresden, Munich, Berlin: l'Expressionnisme en Allemagne, November 18, 1992-March 14, 1993, p. 378, no. 59 (illustrated in color, p. 116; as Buste de femme, Tête d'Erna)
Cologne, Museum Ludwig, Kunstwelten im Dialog: Von Gauguin zur globalen Gegenwart, October 5, 1999-April 19, 2000, p. 116, no. 210 (illustrated in color, pl. 41) <p>Literature
Louis de Marsalle (E.L. Kirchner, pseudonym), "Über die plastischen Arbeiten von E.L. Kirchner," Der Cicerone, 1925, vol. 17, p. 696 (illustrated, p. 694)
Will Grohmann, Das Werk Ernst Ludwig Kirchners, Munich, 1926, p. 57, no. 31 (illustrated, pl. 31; dated 1912)
D. Mato, "Gauguin to Moore: Primitivism in Modern Sculpture," Arts Magazine, 1981-1982, vol. 13, p. 20 (illustrated)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Members Calendar, November 1983 (illustrated on the cover)
Donald B. Kuspit, "An Appeal for Empathy," Art in America, November 1984, p. 122 (illustrated in color)
German Art in the Twentieth Century: Painting and Sculpture: 1905-1985, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, no. 13 (illustrated in color)
Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism, Primitivism and Modernity, New Haven, 1991, p. 78, no. 102 (illustrated, p. 79)
Please note that this work will be included in the Kirchner Retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., (March 2-June 1, 2003), and the Royal Academy of Arts, London (June 28-September 21, 2003). It has also been requested by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, for an additional stop on this tour.
One of very few carvings by Kirchner remaining in private hands, this powerful, perfectly compact sculpture portrays the artist's common-law wife, Erna. It was executed in 1913, at the zenith of Kirchner's maturity, during the same period as many of his greatest paintings. He had settled in Berlin in 1911, and as Wolf-Dieter Dube memorably writes "Kirchner was now in full command of his technique; he was like a panther ready to spring; he only needed to set to work. His style in this period represents a unique concord between psyche and material" (Wolf-Dieter Dube, The Expressionists, London, 1998, p. 42).
Kirchner's own admiration for this pivotal early carving is evidenced
by the fact that on July 23, 1913, he sent a postcard to Gustav Schiefler with
a photograph of the sculpture (FIG. 1). This postcard, in a private collection in Hamburg, confirms the important early date of this seminal piece. On the postcard, Kirchner writes: "Here is a wood sculpture which I've carved from oak wood that drifted ashore."
Kirchner's sculptural ambition at this time was to achieve a perfect synthesis of material and motif. Wishing to elaborate on his brief postcard message, Kirchner writes to Schiefler again on 12 August: "The head which I sent you is a wood carving (oak); I've made a few figures of this kind here. They give, in addition to the freedom of drawing, the cogent rhythm of the form enclosed in the block. And these two elements provide the composition of the picture" (quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, exh. cat., op. cit., p. 115).
Wolfgang Henze also recognized the importance of the present piece in the catalogue of the 1983-84 exhibition "German Expressionist Sculpture," for which it was used as the front cover illustration: "The Head of a Woman had been initiated in many drawings, paintings, and graphics of 1912 and 1913. It constitutes a high point in Kirchner's preoccupation with portraying his wife Erna, which, however, is evidenced only two more times in his plastic art: in the "abstract" Double Portrait of 1928-30, Self Portrait and Erna (Swiss stone pine, Galerie Roman Norbert Ketterer, 42), and in the subdued Erna Kirchner of 1935 (Swiss stone pine, Galerie Roman Norbert Ketterer, 42)" (quoted in ibid.).
This piece is thus, apparently, one of only three identifiable portrait sculptures of one of Kirchner's major muses and models, and of these it is by far the earliest. Erna also served as the model for several of Kirchner's paintings, drawings, and graphic works, and these also convey some sense of her powerful and handsome features (FIG. 3).
The physical exertion required when carving best allowed the artist to express his feelings for his companion, as Kirchner observed: "The love which the artist felt for the girl who was his companion and helper, flowed over the carved figure (and) was ennobled in the picture...that was our way of creating art...That is the way the Brücke looked at art" (E. L. Kirchner, Diary note, 1923, quoted in w.d. Dube, op cit. p. 28).
Quite apart from personal affections, however, all of the influences most important to the artist are evident in this work. It contains hints of the mystical power of the Buddhist art of the Ajanta Caves, which the artist so admired, as well as the carvings of the Palau Islands. However, perhaps the principal influence at work here is that of African Tribal art. Kirchner's carvings were to have a very strong influence on his contemporaries, both inside and outside the Brücke movement, as well as on Post-War German sculptors such as Baselitz.
Later in his career, Kirchner was at great pains to have his work understood and appreciated. Of a highly fragile disposition, he wished to express clearly his own belief in the importance of his achievement while avoiding charges of immodesty. Adopting the name of a fictional French art critic, whom he dubbed Louis de Marsalle, he wrote the article titled "Concerning the Sculpture of E.L. Kirchner" in 1925, which sheds considerable light on his aims as a sculptor. In this text he makes specific mention of Head of Erna while discussing his belief in the superiority of carving directly in wood over casting: "How different that sculpture appears when the artist himself has formed it with his hands out of the genuine material, each curvature and cavity formed by the sensitivity of the creator's hand, each sharp blow or tender carving expressing the immediate feelings of the artist. One must keep this in mind when viewing the Female Dancer with Extended Leg which he carved out of oak, or the Head of Erna, or the Friends" (quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ibid., p. 43).
In this context it is clear that Kirchner, writing some 12 years after having completed Head of Erna, still considered the piece to be an especially significant example of the expressiveness and humanity of his sculptural work. In the article Kirchner also explains the manner in which the application of paint to the surface of the finished carving served to heighten its poignancy and expressive effect: "He (Kirchner) also places color in the service of his sculpture. With complete freedom and nonobjectivity, it is employed to heighten and accentuate the sculptural idea...often this results in very special effects. The richness of color of Medieval sculptures seems about to rise again, except that the modern period applies color very differently than did the old masters" (ibid., p. 44).
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