Title: Bildnis Alfred Flechtheim
Date: 1927
Dimensions: 18,70 cm
Genre: Sculpture
Year of acquisition: 1958
Whereabouts: Museum Ludwig, Köln
Medium: Bronze
Museum director at time of acquisition: Otto H. Förster
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.
Description
Die ausdrucksvollen Züge Alfred Flechtheims sind in der Skulptur von Rudolf Belling in origineller und expressiver Weise formal auf das Wesentliche reduziert. Das Gesicht wird entsprechend Bellings Verständnis von Plastik als Raum allein durch die Modellierung von Nase, Augen und Mund erfasst. So entstand aus der dialektischen Formel, wie es Alfred Kuhn umschrieb, von Plastikkörper als These und imaginierter Raumkörper als Antithese die Skulptur als Synthese. Nicht zu ermitteln ist, aus welchem Guss dieses Exemplar stammt. Vömel verkaufte bis in den fünfziger Jahre Exemplare dieser Skulptur aus verschiedenen Güssen.
Bibliography
Rudolf Belling. Das plastische Werk. Herausgegeben von Galerie Alex Vömel, Düsseldorf 1962, Abb. 9, Kat. Nr. 9.
Julia Friedrich (Hg.): Meisterwerke der Moderne. Die Sammlung Haubrich im Museum Ludwig. Ausst.-Kat. Museum Ludwig, Köln 2012, S.211.
Siegfried Gohr (Hg.): Museum Ludwig Köln. Gemälde, Skulpturen, Environments vom Expressionismus bis zur Gegenwart. Bestandskatalog, München 1986, S. 32.
Winfried Nerdinger: Rudolf Belling und die Kunstströmungen in Berlin. 1918-1923 mit einem Katalog der plastischen Werke, Berlin 1981, S. 211, 243, Abb. 143, S. 210, Kat.Nr. 58.
Gert von der Osten und Horst Keller (Hg.): Katalog der Bildwerke seit etwa 1800 im Wallraf-Richartz-Museum und im öffentlichen Besitz der Stadt Köln, Köln 1965, S. 17, Abb. S. 112.
Hans Albert Peters und Stephan von Wiese (Hg.): Alfred Flechtheim. Sammler. Kunsthändler. Verleger, Ausst.-Kat. Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Köln 1987, vgl. S.228.
