Emy Roeder - Die Blinde - image-1

Lot 517 D

Emy Roeder - Die Blinde

Auction 1033 - overview Cologne
30.05.2014, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 10.000 € - 12.000 €
Result: 30.500 € (incl. premium)

Emy Roeder

Die Blinde
1927

Bronze Height 26.3 cm. Mounted on stone base (4.8 x 11.4 x 11.4 cm) Monogrammed 'E R' on the reverse. Life-time cast. - In fine condition. With greenish-black patina.

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.

Catalogue Raisonné

Gerke 66 with full-page illus. 140/141

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner; since then private possession, North Germany

Literature

Künstlerin sein! Ottilie W. Roederstein - Emy Roeder - Maria von Heider-Schweinitz, exhib. cat. Museum Giersch, Frankfurt am Main 2013, pp. 214 ff. with colour illus. 86

Exhibitions

i.a. Bonn 1950 (Kunstsammlungen der Stadt Bonn), Emy Roeder, Bildwerke und Zeichnungen aus den Jahren 1919-1949, cat. no. 29 with illus.; Berlin 1951 (Hochschule für Bildende Künste), Deutscher Künstlerbund, erste Ausstellung, cat. no. 277; Hanover 1953 (Kestnergesellschaft), Emy Roeder, cat. no. 6; Kassel 1955, documenta 1. Kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts, cat. no. 545; Darmstadt 1958/59 (Hessisches Landesmuseum), Emy Roeder. Bildwerke und Zeichnungen, no. 4; Brunswick 1959 (Städtisches Museum), Emy Roeder. Bildwerke und Zeichnungen, cat. no. 4; Hamburg 1960 (Kunstverein), Emy Roeder. Ausstellung zum 70. Geburtstag, cat. no. 3; Berlin 1961 (Ausstellungshallen am Funkturm), Große Berliner Kunstausstellung, cat. no. 779 with illus., Mainz 1962 (Kunstgeschichtliches Institut), Emy Roeder. Bildwerke und Zeichnungen, cat. no. 54