Ewald Mataré
Stehende Madonna mit Kind
1938
Bronze Height 42.4 cm Monogrammed with stamp mark 'MATARÉ' verso. One of three known casts, one of which is located in the collection of the Diözesanmuseum Kolumba, Cologne. - The beautiful bronze-coloured patina partially lightened.
In pose and gesture Ewald Mataré's "Stehende Madonna" is reminiscent of and leads us to identify its borrowings from late Gothic versions of this figural type; at the same time, he adeptly succeeds in relativising the severity of the appearance by cautiously heightening the dynamism of the figure's pose and through the soft folds of the drapery. Mataré extends this Marian image, which is traditional in its basic conception, with a few semi-abstract accents - for example, in the area of the hair - and uses the reductive elementary forms typical of his work to turn this piece into a subtle combination of sacred subject and modern formal idiom.
Catalogue Raisonné
Schilling 163
Provenance
583. Math. Lempertz'sche Kunstversteigerung, Kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts, lot 562 with illus. pl. 106, 30 May 1981; Private collection, Rhineland (since 1981)
Literature
Flemming, Hanns Theodor, Ewald Mataré, Munich 1955, p. 40 with full-page illus. pl. 59 ("Stehende Madonna")
Exhibitions
Cologne 1948 (Staatenhaus), Christliche Kunst der Gegenwart, cat. no. 401, Cologne 1966 (Kölnischer Kunstverein), Ewald Mataré. Skulpturen, Holzschnitte, Aquarelle 1920 bis 1965, cat. no. 25; Düsseldorf 1967 (Städtische Kunsthalle), Ewald Mataré. Plastiken, Kunsthandwerk, Handzeichnungen, Aquarelle, Graphik, cat. no. 39