Rudolf Belling
Der Boxer (Max Schmeling), 1929

Alfred Flechtheim and Rudolf Belling

The sculptor Max Belling created theatre decorations for Max Reinhardt and, from 1925 onwards, successfully exhibited his sculptures internationally. A sculpture by Belling was included on the front of Ruggiero Vasari’s magazine ‘Der Futurismus’ in summer 1922. "Skulptur 23" – for which Belling divided the head into its component parts, reduced these to fundamental geometric shapes and reassembled them – is one of his major works.

For his portrait of Alfred Flechtheim in 1927, he removed the eyes, nose and lips completely from the shaped skull. He was called to the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1931 and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In January 1937 Belling emigrated to Turkey. His works was defamed by the Nazis at the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition and partly destroyed. Four sculptures in all were removed from museums in Berlin and Essen.

Belling’s œuvre is marked by joint projects with architects. Wolfgang Gurlitt’s new villa, designed by Walter Würzbach, was furnished with sculptural works and unconventional ornamentation by Belling in 1918. The Scala Casino, a former wintersports arena, was converted into a dance hall and wine bar together with Würzbach in 1920. The critic Paul Westheim interpreted the Expressionist building as a spatial architectural sculpture; opponents saw it as kind of overtly fashionable, lighthearted cinema architecture. For the famous Goldstein Villa in Grunewald, designed in the Cubist style by Arthur Korn, Belling made a seemingly Futuristic tiered fountain. Rudolph Belling’s first solo exhibition was in 1919 at Wolfgang Gurlitt’s gallery in Berlin. This was followed in 1924 by a second one in the so-called Kronprinzenpalais, under the direction of Ludwig Justi. It was here that the Nationalgalerie Berlin acquired the sculpture "Dreiklang". Works by Belling were shown in several group exhibitions in Flechtheim’s galleries.