Fritz Klimsch - Sommertag - image-1

Lot 89 D

Fritz Klimsch - Sommertag

Auction 1177 - overview Cologne
17.06.2021, 18:00 - Modern/Contemporary Art - Evening Sale
Estimate: 30.000 € - 40.000 €
Result: 37.500 € (incl. premium)

Fritz Klimsch

Sommertag
1937

Bronze Length 110.5 cm Monogrammed 'F. K.' and with foundry mark "H. NOACK BERLIN" on right sole of foot. - With mid-brown patina, partially lightened.

At this auction it will be possible to offer two nearly life-size bronzes from the late period of Fritz Klimsch's oeuvre, which are striking in their natural grace.
As a reclining nude of this size, "Sommertag" is very rare within the artist's work. Klimsch idealised a portrait of his daughter-in-law to serve as the basis for the face of the reclining young woman. Egbert Delpy has written enthusiastically about this figure, who indulges in a sunbath, relaxing in a luxuriating pose: "Thus, his nudes repeatedly radiate their inner joy in their own beauty, their blissful abandonment to freedom, all over again … in their languorous stretching out and relaxing ("Sommertag") in the most graceful and natural manner" (cited in: Hermann Braun, Fritz Klimsch. Eine Dokumentation, Cologne 1991, p. 387).
"Jugend" possesses a classical air and was Klimsch's last bronze figure to be close to life-size. It forms the crowning finale of the sculptors' series of standing young female nudes in bronze.
The 19-year-old Margrit Schlömer served as the artist's model. Her lover, the artistically ambitious young jurist Dr Hanswilly Bernartz, had sent Klimsch a nude photo of Schlömer in April 1940, asking whether she might not be an ideal model for him. She personally described the preparatory work in the summer of 1940 as follows: "I was in Berlin for four weeks. In the mornings, in his studio in Schillerstraße, Klimsch initially worked on the clay models. […] During the first few days, he also made drawings, but he did not like them. At a certain point he told me: keep standing like that, it is exactly what I want to do. That is how the little model, which you are familiar with, was initially created and then, later, the large figure. I experienced the pose as entirely natural" (cited in: Braun, Klimsch, op. cit., p. 399). This uninhibitedness and spontaneity during the modelling process become readily apparent in the vibrant, unaffected expression of the bronze which, as an allegory, can stand for "youth" in its purest form.

Catalogue Raisonné

Braun 184

Provenance

Private possession, North Rhine-Westphalia

Literature

Hermann Braun, Fritz Klimsch. Werke, Hanover 1980, cat. no. 35 with full-page illus. p. 86

Exhibitions

Berlin 1938 (Ausstellungsgebäude Tiergartenstraße 21 a), Sonderausstellung Fritz Klimsch. Plastik, cat. no. 3; Munich 1938 (Haus der Deutschen Kunst), Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung, p. 59, cat. no. 492; Halle 1939 (Städtisches Moritzburgmuseum), Fritz Klimsch - Ausstellung, cat. no. 22