Renée Sintenis
Der Boxer Paul Wallner
1933
Bronze Height 35.5 cm Signed 'R Sintenis' on the cast-with plinth and foundry mark "GUSS RICH BARTH" on right plinth edge. - Dark brown patina.
Paul Wallner (1910-1977) was a professional heavyweight boxer from Düsseldorf, and he fought numerous matches in Berlin in the 1930s and 1940s. Attracted to men as well as women, Wallner had an intimate relationship during those years with Arnold Kunheim, a wealthy member of an industrialist family. It was in turn through Kunheim, who was engaged to the writer Hanna Kiel and frequented artistic circles in Berlin, that Wallner and the sports enthusiast Renée Sintenis met.
The bronze offered here was exhibited in 2016/2017 at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt in the context of the exhibition “Geschlechterkampf [Battle of the Sexes]: Franz von Stuck bis Frida Kahlo”.
Catalogue Raisonné
Berger/Ladwig 139; Buhlmann 53
Certificate
We would like to Ursel Berger, Berlin, for scientific advice.
Provenance
Formerly private collection, Rhineland, in family possession since
Literature
Hanna Kiel, Renée Sintenis, Berlin 1935, p. 87 with illus. ("Boxer")
Exhibitions
Berlin 1958 (Haus am Waldsee), Renée Sintenis. Das plastische Werk, Zeichnungen, Graphik, Kat. Nr. 31; Frankfurt 2016/2017 (Städel Museum), Geschlechterkampf. Franz von Stuck bis Frida Kahlo, cat. no. 155 with full-page colour illus. p. 241 (our exemplar)