Lot 199 Nα

Ernst Barlach’s “Zweifler” of 1930 is one of the artist’s most impressive sculptures. The figure – which he also realised once more in wood (Laur 612) in 1937, shortly before his death – was created under the influence of the increasing nationalistic defamation to which the artist had been exposed since the late 1920s.
In 1912 Barlach had already composed the basic form of the figure in a drawing, and in 1918 he further developed it in the lithograph “Der Blinde” (Laur Druckgraphik 52). This served as the cover image of Adolf von Hatzfeld’s autobiographical novella “Franziskus”, one of the central works of German Expressionism. The lithograph accordingly shows the figure wearing a blindfold, which Barlach discarded in the later sculptural version.
The sculptural figure found by way of these preliminary works appears block-like and earthly; as is so often the case in his later sculptures, Barlach has built it up through the form of the drapery. This encases the body within a unifying covering and ensures a concentration on the gesture and pose through the reduction of form.