DancePlastic

Georg Kolbe’s most famous sculpture, the ‘Dancer’, is 100 years old. It was presented to the public for the first time at the Berlin Secession’s spring exhibition in 1912 and enchanted the whole world. In the same year, the National Gallery bought Kolbe’s work, which contributed to the figure’s enormous fame. To mark its anniversary, the ‘Dancer’ is the centrepiece of the exhibition ‘TanzPlastik – die tänzerische Bewegung in der Skulptur der Moderne’. She embodies the spirit of dance like almost no other work of art. With a dreamy expression on her face and outstretched arms, the young woman depicted gives herself completely to the dance movements. The slightly bent legs, thrusting hips and tilted head suggest a rotational movement around her own body axis – a moment of movement captured in an eternally resting bronze.

At first glance, however, sculpture and dance appear to be two opposites: the former is static, solid and permanent, while the latter is moving, weightless and fleeting. Nevertheless, sculptors have been working with the motif of dance for centuries. The aim is to show how sculptural forms of expression – inspired by dance – are expanding and refining. By translating the moment, the fleeting moment of movement, into a permanent sculptural composition, postures and gestures are created that were previously unknown in sculpture.

The selection of sculptures focuses on the first half of the 20th century, when dance and sculpture met in a particularly inspiring way. The show begins with Art Nouveau, whose sculptures, often with strong erotic connotations, were influenced by vaudeville dance and the veil dances that were becoming fashionable at the time. It was during this period that the first female dance revolutionaries emerged, such as Isadora Duncan and Loie Fulier, who were perceived by contemporaries as living sculptures and made a strong impression on visual artists. The Lebensform movement gave rise to a new body awareness; gymnastics and rhythmic movement led to new types of dance performances. The resulting expressive dance particularly attracted the interest of artists.

The exhibition will illustrate this by focussing on figures from the 1910s and 1920s. The relationship between figurative sculpture and dance in modernism will be traced further on the basis of sculptures from the following three decades.

Georg Kolbe, who dealt extensively with the subject, will be represented with several works. Sculptures by Fritz Klimsch, Bernhard Hoetger, Max Klinger, Franz von Stuck, Camille Claudel, Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Ernesto de Fiori, Rudol Belling, Alexander Archipenko, Will Lammert, Milly Steger, William Wauer, Renée Sintenis, Hermann Haller, Bernhard Heiliger, Marino Marini, Gerhard Marcks and Gustav Seitz will also be on display.

The exhibition is complemented by historical photos of famous dancers.