Ewald Mataré - Stehende Kuh (Windkuh) - image-1
Ewald Mataré - Stehende Kuh (Windkuh) - image-2
Ewald Mataré - Stehende Kuh (Windkuh) - image-1Ewald Mataré - Stehende Kuh (Windkuh) - image-2

Lot 31 D

Ewald Mataré - Stehende Kuh (Windkuh)

Auction 1187 - overview Cologne
03.12.2021, 18:00 - Evening Sale - Modern and Contemporary Art
Estimate: 50.000 € - 70.000 €
Result: 91.250 € (incl. premium)

Ewald Mataré

Stehende Kuh (Windkuh)
1923

Bronze Height 18.7 cm. Width 33.2 cm. Depth 7.3 cm Unsigned. Early life-time cast. One of a total of 20 known casts. - Dark brown patina, partially lightened. Minor chip to rump with old addition, presumably by the artist.

The bronze sculpture “Stehende Kuh”, best known under the title “Windkuh”, is an iconic work from Ewald Mataré's early oeuvre. Other casts from this edition can be found at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Busch-Reisinger Museum/Harvard Arts Museums, Cambridge, and the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmusem, Schloss Gottdorf, for example.
Mataré went from painting to the woodcut and from there to sculpture - the art form in which he found his calling and in which he pursued entirely new paths stylistically.
In the early 1920s, critically occupying himself with Adolf von Hildebrand's treatise “Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst”, he developed a way of working that was not based on the visual, as advocated by Hildebrand, but on the haptic. “Without being aware of it, I came to oppose his aesthetic considerations about 'viewing' the object. I proclaimed for myself and also outside myself that touching, feeling were the most primary thing in creating form and, with this insight, which I had developed from within myself, I stood and also still stand alone”, wrote Mataré in retrospect (cited in: Sabine Maja Schilling, Ewald Mataré. Das plastische Werk. Werkverzeichnis, Cologne 1987, p. 27).
The “Windkuh” was the earliest of his archaic works. It was created as a wooden sculpture in the town of List on the island of Sylt in the summer of 1923. Setting out from the existing natural features of a narrow piece of walnut wood at his disposal, the artist found a form that suggests monumentality when viewed in profile and is simultaneously executed in a relief-like flatness. The ostensible shortcoming of the material has led to an artistically consummate result. Mataré has created the symbol of a cow defined by a highly haptic understanding - abstracting its organic form and translating it into a figure of weightless elegance. The supple form of the body stands in energetic contrast to the rustic charm of the lively patina that characterises this beautiful early cast.

Catalogue Raisonné

Schilling 15a

Certificate

We would like to thank Guido de Werd, Cologne, for additional information confirming the authenticity.

Provenance

Family possession, Poland, in 3rd generation

Literature

Ernst Kallai, Der Plastiker Mataré, in: Das Kunstblatt, 11th. yr., 1927, pS. 68 with illus.; Albert Schulze-Vellinghausen, Ewald Mataré, in: Werk, 34th. yr., October 1947, no. 10, p. 341 with illus; Hanns Theodor Flemming, Ewald Mataré, Munich 1955, p. 23; no. 6 with illus.; Toni Feldenkirchen, Zeichen von der Erde und den Himmeln, in: Weltkunst, 47th. yr., 1977, no. 5, p. 405, with illus.; Gerhard Wietek (ed.), Der Kreuzstall. Ein neues Museum für die Kunst des 20. Jhs., Landesmuseum Schloß Gottdorf in Schleswig, Neumünster 1985, no. 23 with illus.

Exhibitions

Berlin 1924 (Landesausstellungsgebäude), Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung, cat. no. 952, pl. 59 ("Kuh"); Berlin 1929 (Galerie Ferdinand Möller), Ewald Mataré. Plastiken, Holzschnitte, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen 1920-1929, cat. no. 5; Zurich 1931 (Kunsthaus), Internationale Ausstellung Plastik. Skulpturen in Zürich, p. 28, cat. no. 125; Stockholm 1954 (Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet), Ewald Mataré. Skulpturer Träsnitt 1921-1953, no. 6; Düsseldorf 1965 (Galerie Vömel), Werke deutscher Bildhauer, with illus.; Trier 1966 (Städtisches Museum), Mataré, cat. no. 3; Kaiserslautern/Heilbronn 1981 (Pfalzgalerie/Städtische Museen), Ewald Mataré, cat. no. 3; Düsseldorf 2005 (Akademie-Galerie), Ewald Mataré - Eine Werkübersicht, cat. no. 2 with illus.; Kleve 2010 (Museum Kurhaus Kleve), Eine rheinische Privatsammlung, cat. no. 1, full-page colour illus. p. 21