Georg Kolbe
Georg Kolbe (1877-1947) is one of the most important sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century. His idealized nude sculptures are an expression of his intense occupation with the depiction of modern man. His artistic breakthrough came in 1911 with his figure „Dancer,“ which was followed by numerous sculptures inspired by the movement of modern dance. Kolbe’s expressive female figure „Morning“ came to be installed in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion of 1929, now an iconic modernist building. Walter Gropius, Hans Poelzig, and Henry van de Velde also appreciated his sculptures and saw his work in relation to their architecture. Kolbe was involved in the secessionist associations of his time and was in close contact with artists such as Max Beckmann, Renée Sintenis, Ernst Barlach and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
Initially trained as a painter and draftsman, Georg Kolbe turned to sculpture around 1900 during an extended stay in Rome, in order to recognize in sculpture his life’s task as an artist. What drove him again and again was the attempt to find a form in harmony of body and spirit, a valid expression for humankind’s inner movement. Accordingly, he used the term „expressive sculpture“ for his art. After moving to Berlin in 1904, the sculptor found his own formal language at the end of the decade. In 1911/12, his nearly life-size sculpture „Dancer“ was acquired by the then director of the Berlin National Gallery, Ludwig Justi, as the first example of modernist sculpture for the museum’s collection. The depiction of the young, graceful woman, completely immersed in dance-like movement, was clearly regarded as a symbol of a new understanding of modern sculpture. The figure left behind everything mannered, cloying and rigid in art from the time of the German emperors in favor of a body-emphasizing concept of beauty and art amidst a young, yet self-confident bourgeoisie. A new, free human being emerged, who was able to dance his or her way out of the shackles of the past.
The nineteen tens in Kolbe’s oeuvre are animated by delicate, sensitive, and supple bodies that, as it were, meet the multifaceted nature of their world and its challenges on tiptoe. An impressive example of this important phase in Kolbe’s early work is the small sculpture of the Russian star dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, to whom Kolbe dedicated a full-figure portrait of extreme charm and gracefulness. Dance, and especially its new forms of expression developed by artists such as Gret Palucca, Vera Skoronel, Charlotte Bara, and Ted Shawn, remained an important source of inspiration for the sculptor until the end of his life.
Kolbe’s work is always accompanied by fine and, as it were, powerful drawings in which the artist consistently worked to capture the human body in all its motions. The medium, learned at the outset and skillfully mastered, gave him a lightness on the basis of which he could provide generous pictorial and idealized space to the sculptural treatment of his subject. Drawing, as well as the printmaking activities that resulted from it, also constituted an important pillar in Kolbe’s artistic career. They were popular items for sale at the Paul Cassirer Gallery, and Kolbe’s early patron and influential Berlin art dealer owner played a significant role in their commercial success. From today’s perspective, Kolbe’s drawings are among the most modern and probably also the most beautiful that the artist created in the course of his career.
In the nineteen twenties, Georg Kolbe arrived at his mature style that still enjoys a high degree of popularity today. In particular, his repeated collaborations with internationally outstanding modernist architects reveal how strongly the sculptor thought through new notions of space and proportion, volume and lightness, outline and perspective in his work and also sought new solutions in this field. The best-known example is the installation of his 1925 sculpture „Morning“ in the Barcelona Pavilion designed by the influential architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the 1929 World’s Fair.
From today’s perspective, the late sculptures from the last 15 years of Kolbe’s life appear less imbued with the desire for new pictorial solutions than with an increasingly rigid redundancy. The expansive movement of the earlier figures gives way to static, almost always standing postures without any discernible compositional curiosity, and without the sophistication of his earlier works. Kolbe’s failing eyesight due to illness and recurring cancer that would lead to his death in 1947 may have contributed to this change. In particular however, due to an increasingly larger, often larger-than-life execution, progressively undifferentiated physiology, and the spirit of conquest they imbue, from today’s perspective these works can be easily seen as forerunners to, and later, conforming to, the National Socialists’ image of the ideal Germanic figure. Kolbe himself was never a member of the NSDAP. Nevertheless, from today’s perspective, criticism can be leveled at him for not publicly distancing himself clearly enough from the NSDAP and for accepting exhibition invitations, honors, and awards from those in power at the time in order to maintain his career success. Kolbe’s late work, especially his figures of the 1930s and 1940s inspired by a heroic Nietzsche cult, was easily appropriated by Nazi propaganda. The Georg Kolbe Museum’s research and exhibition practice, therefore, stand for a nuanced formation of knowledge that attempts to understand and convey the work and its context from its time. From today’s perspective, the artist’s biography is full of fractures and contradictions, which we, as those born later, must endure, name, and classify. Beyond the art-historical judgment, there is the necessity of a time-historical analysis of the artistic production. The Georg Kolbe Museum actively confronts these complexities through its intensive research and mediation work.