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1880-1938
MANN UND FRAU (MAN AND WOMAN)

MANN UND FRAU (MAN AND WOMAN)

measurements
mann - height: 52.5cm., 20 5/8 in.

alternate measurements
frau - height: 52cm., 20 1/2 in.

Executed in 1922.

both sculptures: carved wood and hand-painted by the artist

PROVENANCE

Galerie Beyeler, Basel (by 1955)
Gerson Gallery, New York
Sale: Klipstein & Kornfeld, Bern, 25th May 1962, lot 481
Frans Sandbergen, Amsterdam
Galerie Utermann, Dortmund (by 1985)
Acquired by the present owner by 1994

EXHIBITED

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Expressionisten, 1955, no. 20 & 21
Dortmund, Galerie Utermann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1985, no. 3, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (dated circa 1918)
Munich, Galerie Thomas, 30 Jahre Galerie Thomas, 1994, no. 45, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (dated circa 1918)
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Der Maler als Bildhauer, 2003, no. 42, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

LITERATURE

Titia Hoffmeister, Werke der 'Brücke' -Künstler, Munich, 1997, no. 1, illustrated p. 169
Wolfgang Henze, 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner', in Die Maler und ihre Skulpturen. Von Edgar Degas bis Gerhard Richter (exhibition catalogue), Museum Folkwang Essen, Cologne 1997, illustrated in colour p. 135
Wolfgang Henze, Die Plastik Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.Monographie mit Werkverzeichnis, Wichtrach/Bern, 2002, no. 1922/01, illustrated in colour p. 368

NOTE

Kirchner's wooden sculptures Mann und Frau are two vibrantly coloured sculptures, executed during his self-imposed, beloved exile to the mountain farm house near Frauenkirch in the Swiss Alps, brilliantly exemplifying Kirchner's fascination with primitive life and non-Western art.

'He [Kirchner] creates his figures directly out of the material. In the case of sculpture, the material is far more decisive than in painting; and yet (traditionally) the sculptor leaves it to other hands to fashion this material. How different that sculpture appears when the artist has formed it with his own hands out of 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' (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner writing under the pseudonym 'L. de Marsalle' quoted in Concerning the Sculpture of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, published in Der Cicerone vol. 17, no. 14, 1925 pp. 695-701).

Since the early Brücke years of 1905 in Dresden, Kirchner was very much fascinated with the body of the nude, often having friends or fellow artists naked in his studio simply to experience life in all its bodily freedom (fig. 3 & 4). Like Emil Nolde and other Brücke members, Kirchner was interested in the simple, expressive rendering of shapes and forms of African sculptures and large wooden beams from New Guinea which he had seen in the Dresden Ethnographical Museum from 1902 onwards. Kirchner's fascination with primitivist forms of life are illustrated throughout his sculptural oeuvre (figs. 1 & 2). In the present work, the artist concentrates on a depiction of the bare essentials, whereby the colour in particular effectively illustrates the tactile volume of the sculptures alternating between round and sharply chiselled edges. Mann und Frau are a perfect example of the 'language of symbolic form', whereby simple shapes and forms are carved out of rough-hewn wood, resulting in two easily identifiable sculptures of a naked man and woman. When positioned looking towards each other, the pair is imbued with sexual tension, which is further heightened by the strong clash of fiery red and electric blue.

Later in Berlin, the most important factor in Kirchner's artistic maturation was a slow and arduous progress in draughtsmanship. Exposed to academic instructions, it was nevertheless through long self-training in Dresden that he gradually learned that exact representation could not be achieved through objective faithfulness to nature. As the artist himself wrote: 'Through the speed of work (moving, walking, not holding still until one was finished), abbreviations took place in sketches, paintings and sculptures. I was struck with astonishment: there was after all a form which could represent, say, a man or a movement exactly and for all that, depart from the objective form in nature. Was it perhaps possible in this manner to produce an art, understandable to all (though not their ideal in photographic faithfulness to nature) - an art in a language of symbolic form' (quoted in Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Massachusetts, 1968, p. 19).

Physically and mentally traumatized by World War I, Kirchner gradually recovered in the alpine environment of Switzerland. In contrast to the hectic frenzy of city life, the rural surroundings allowed Kirchner to achieve a more 'primitive' lifestyle that he and the other Brücke artists had often longed for. The resultant culture shock presented him with an artistic challenge that was to prove extremely productive, bringing his art to a new zenith. With the realization 'to give pictorial form to contemporary life' (D. E. Gordon, p. 22), Kirchner simultaneously achieved an existential unity between artistic idealism and artistic reality. 'The simple seeing of a form in nature can be traced back to the carving of wooden sculptures. Such figures grow freely out of vivid imagination' (quoted in T. Hoffmeister, op. cit., p. 169).

This work was acquired by the banker Frans Sandbergen, the son of an important Amsterdam family of merchants, in the early 1960's. As a passionate collector of old masters, antique silver, Asian art and Syrian ceramics, he began to focus on modern art as early as 1924 as he knew some of the contemporary artists personally.

Mann und Frau combines Kirchner's physical artistic approach of the Brücke years with his later calm and sensual style, culminating in this expressive, emotionally charged sculptural pair.