Title: Fußballspieler
Date: 1927
Dimensions: 41 cm x 15,50 cm x 36 cm
Genre: Sculpture
Year of acquisition: 1929
Whereabouts: Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund
Medium: Bronze
Museum director at time of acquisition: Prof. Albert Baum
Alfred Flechtheim and Renée Sintenis
The German sculptress and draughtswoman was descended from Huguenot refugees by the name of Saint-Denis. Sintenis knew that she wanted to be an artist from an early age. She left Gymnasium at the age of 17 without a school-leaving certificate and enrolled at the college of arts and crafts. She started drawing nudes and heads having previously focused primarily on animals. Her small-scale animal sculptures are her most important works. She did, however, also make a number of self-portraits and small statues of athletes. After leaving the Kunstgewerbeschule, also without completing her course, she modelled for the sculptor Georg Kolbe. She met the typographer and painter Emil Rudolf Weiss who later became her husband. Like Karl Hofer, he also enjoyed the financial support of the industrialist Theodor Reinhart of Winterthur, Switzerland. In 1910 Sintenis created her first self-portrait in terracotta based on an etching. In 1913 the artist first exhibited at the Berlin Secession.
In the 1920s she had her greatest success. She was represented by the gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim who staged a number of group exhibitions of sculptures and drawings by the artist between 1920 and 1933. In 1931 Renée Sintenis was the first sculptress to become a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. After being classified a ‘half Jew’ according to the National Socialists’ Nuremberg Laws, the artist was excluded from the Akademie in 1934 although she was allowed to remain in the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture) and continue to work. Works of hers were confiscated from museums in Berlin, Erfurt, Düsseldorf and Bremen as part of the ‘Degenerate Art’ campaign in 1937. After the war Sintenis worked as a professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin. Her large-format sculpture of the Berlin Bear was exhibited in 1957 in Berlin, in 1960 in Düsseldorf and 1962 in Munich. At the Berlinale, small-format silver and gold-plated versions of her Berlin Bear are presented to award-winners.
Sintenis and Flechtheim met before World War I. Even if Flechtheim never organised a solo exhibition for her, she was one of his favourite artists. Among all the German painters and sculptors she was represented time and again very prominently together with Hofer, Levy, Nauen, Purrmann, de Fiori and Haller. Flechtheim can be considered her ‘gallery discoverer’. One of her largest animal sculptures used to stand at the entrance to the Berlin gallery in Lützowufer, underlying the great importance of her art for Flechtheim. Museums and private collectors also bought her works of art in equal measure.
Description
Wie in einer Momentaufnahme fängt die Skulptur den Schwung eines Fußballspielers ein, der den Ball soeben geschossen hat. Die Blicke des Sportlers fixieren noch das Ziel, sein rechtes Bein ist hochgerissen, während er auf dem Ballen und den Zehen seines linken Fußes balanciert. Die Arme stabilisieren das Gleichgewicht. Renée Sintenis, selbst passionierte Reiterin, hatte eine große Affinität zum Sport. Ihre Plastiken stellen auch Boxer, Fünfkämpfer, Läufer, Polospieler und Tänzer dar. Die Skulptur befand sich seit 1927 zur Ansicht im Dortmunder Museum.
Bibliography
Das Problem der Generation. Die um 1880 geborenen Maler von heute. I. Teil: Die Deutschen, Ausst.-Kat. Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin 1927, Nr. 147
René Crevel: Renée Sintenis, Paris 1930, S. 53
René Crevel und Georg Biermann: Renée Sintenis, Berlin 1930, Kat.-Nr. 78
Hanna Kiel: Renée Sintenis, Berlin 1935, S.49
Renée Sintenis, mit einem Beitrag v. Rudolf Hagelstange, Carl Georg Heise und Paul Appel, Berlin 1947, S. 70
Museum am Ostwall. Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Sammlung, hg. v. Eugen Thiemann, Dortmund 1984, S. 236-237
Britta E. Buhlmann: Renée Sintenis. Werkmonographie der Skulpturen, Darmstadt 1987, Nr. 50, S. 160-161
Monika Flacke-Knoch: Katalog der ausgestellten Werke, in: Alfred Flechtheim. Sammler. Kunsthändler. Verleger, Ausst.-Kat. Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1987, S. 214-309, hier: Nr. 94, S. 305 (Exemplar Hamburger Kunsthalle)
präsent. Zur Geschichte eines Fördervereins und seines Museums in Dortmund, hg. v. Harald Walter, Ausst.-Kat. Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Dortmund, Dortmund 1998, S. 104-105
Ulrike Gärtner und Christiane Althoff: Der Dortmunder Museumsverein und das städtische Kunst- und Gewerbemuseum, in: präsent. Zur Geschichte eines Fördervereins und seines Museums in Dortmund, hg. v. Harald Walter, Ausst.-Kat. Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Dortmund, Dortmund 1998, S. 115-162, hier: S. 135