Lot 14 Dα

According to its recent presentation, this bronze has been confirmed as an old Noack cast. Based on preliminary knowledge it is possible, but not certain, that the cast could have been made during the artist's lifetime. It is well-known that the programmes of castings agreed upon between Alfred Flechtheim and Barlach and the Berlin foundry in 1930 and 1931 were continued after Flechtheim was forced to emigrate in 1933. In this context, the originally planned limitation of the editions was exceeded, sometimes considerably during the artist's lifetime, and this was also the case with the bronze of the "Zweifler" (see Laur 470 1): the catalogue raisonné lists 17 copies solely for the period from 1930 to 17 February 1938, the date of Barlach's death - some of which do not display a foundry mark, as is the case here. After the artist's death, additional copies may have been produced until 1941, including zinc casts necessitated by the war (see Laur 470, notes on 2) and 3)).

Ernst Barlach had selected the “Zweifler” of 1930 - which very soon seems to have been considered as an alter ego of the artist - to be produced in bronze in Flechtheim's second planned casting programme (the plaster version is to be found in Güstrow, Ernst Barlach Stiftung, see Laur 469). A version in wood (Laur 612, ibid., Güstrow) was created in 1937, shortly before his death. The work of sculpture - as was so often the case with Barlach - was preceded by a number of drawings and sketches from earlier years which featured related formulations (charcoal drawings from 1917/1918 as well as pen-and-ink and charcoal drawings for the lithograph “Der Blinde” from 1918). With regard to the gesture of the hands folded together and stretched in front of the figure, the sculpture “Sorgende Frau” (wood, Ernst Barlach Haus Hamburg), which had already been created in 1910, can surely also be cited. However, as a draped kneeling figure, Barlach's work actually builds on the sacred sculpture of the Middle Ages, conveying the painful internalisation of human desperation - which may also find expression in the solitude of prayer.

Barlach's “Zweifler” overwhelms us with its artistic composition of form, which not only “functions” within the realm of church architecture but can, as an expressionist masterpiece, actually be universally experienced and responded to.