Lot 517 D

The portrait of the “Blinde” (Blind woman) can be considered one of Emy Roeder's most important sculptural works. The artist restrains the portrait-like features for the sake of a reductive pictorial idiom, and she concentrates the distinctive characteristics of her subject to achieve the greatest expressive power. “In 1927 Emy Roeder achieved a great success that resonated, as though from a mysterious centre, throughout the whole period that followed: the bronze head of the blind woman ... Here the tradition of 1920 is set forth, refined into elevated form and inner greatness. It is a Cassandra of the common people: her mouth is open, but does not speak; her eyes are blind, but they see. The rugged features are simultaneously masculine and feminine, not old, but most certainly not young ... The blind woman bears ... her fate as a burden, like girls bear a heavy jug on their heads. Her eye is directed entirely inwards; but she is full of strength, without resignation” (Friedrich Gerke, Emy Roeder, Eine Werkbiographie mit einem Gesamtkatalog der Bildwerke und Zeichnungen, Wiesbaden 1963, p. 14).
Additional casts are to be found in Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, in a Californian private collection and in a Stuttgart private collection.