Rudolf Belling Lot n° 520

Organic forms (striding man). Bronze, silver plated. (19)21. Height approx. 54 cm. One of 12 planned copies, of which probably not all were executed. With the incised name of the artist and the date at the bottom side of the base as well as with the foundry stamp "H. NOACK BERLIN". Nerdinger 38 (copy not listed there). We thank Mr. Wolfgang Werner, executor of the artist's estate, Bremen, for his kind advice in cataloguing this work. Exhibition: Great Berlin Art Exhibition, Berlin 1922, cat. no. 1195 (plaster model). Provenance: Private collection, Bavaria, probably acquired in the 1970s. Posthumous cast from the 1970s. Belling presented the plaster model of this figure in 1922 at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition (cat. no. 1195). Only 2 bronze examples were cast as early as the 1920s, the other casts date from the 1950/60s and 1970s. <br><br> Rudolf Belling completed an apprenticeship as a metalworker and initially worked as a moulder and modeller in a company for decorative metalwork such as small sculptures and frames in the Art Nouveau style. He was thus familiar from the ground up with all the techniques of metalworking, such as casting, etching, engraving, fine polishing and assembly. In 1908 Belling went into business for himself with his work colleague Emil Kaselow and founded a studio for small sculpture, decoration and arts and crafts. This was followed by a close collaboration with Max Reinhardt's theater stage, for which Belling designed and executed numerous large-scale sculptural stage designs. In 1911 Belling came to the attention of Professor Peter Breuer, who accepted him as a master student at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Art Academy, where he was given his own student studio, which he was allowed to use until 1922. In the following years Belling intensively studied the traditions and theories of sculpture, travelled to Belgium, Holland, England and France and participated in his first exhibitions. During the First World War, as a soldier in the air force in Berlin-Adlershof, he can continue to work artistically in his academy studio. During this time he creates his first expressive cubist figures. He was strongly influenced by the Italian Futurists, the Russian Constructivists and the Dutch De Stijl movement. In 1918 Belling was a co-founder of the artists' association "Novembergruppe". Numerous participations in exhibitions and solo shows as well as exclusive interior design commissions in collaboration with renowned architects and other artists testify to how established Rudolf Belling was in the art scene of the 1920s. In 1931 he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, and in 1935 he received a teaching position at a private art school in New York as well as a solo exhibition at Rockefeller Center New York. In January 1937 he emigrates to Turkey, having been appointed professor and head of the sculpture department at the Academy of Arts in Istanbul through the mediation of the architect Hans Poelzig at the end of 1936. In Germany he was defamed as a "degenerate artist" in the following years, his works were removed from public spaces and state collections and destroyed, some major works were denigrated at the Nazi exhibition 'Degenerate Art'. It was not until the 1950s that Belling returned to Germany for regular visits, and in 1955 Federal President Theodor Heuss awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit. The first solo exhibitions after the war in Hagen (1956), Berlin and Düsseldorf (both 1962) pay tribute to his artistic work. In 1966 Belling returns for good and lives from then on in Krailling near Munich. <br><br> "In Boccioni's 'Manifesto tecnico della scultura futurista' of 1912 and his other writings from this period, a concept similar to Belling's spatial sculpture is already elevated to a program: 'Let us tear open the figure and enclose the environment within it.' Boccioni's 'environmental sculpture' is a shaping of the basic Futurist concept of 'simultaneity', i.e. the interpenetration of interior and exterior space and the simultaneity of 'absolute and relative movement'. The spiral motif, so often used by Belling, was for the Futurists a sign of the 'dynamism that pulsates through everything', an expression of the 'vortex of life that causes matter to rise in a spiral'. (...) <br> Belling's 'Organic Forms' (...) are the design of the 'absolute movement' in space alone, of the inner driving force, of the mechanical heartbeat. They are simultaneity of man and machine, of technical force and organic form. The dynamic basic form of a striding, almost armoured appearing man with a spherical head is reminiscent of Boccioni's 'Forme uniche', Belling used jed