Lot 144 Dα

This work depicts the writer and literary critic Arthur Friedrich Binz, who belonged to the artist’s circle of friends in Saarbrücken (see photo). Christoph Voll held a professorship at the state school for art and crafts there from 1924 to 1928. Voll has singled the head out from the massive, rising, elongated body in a way that marks it as the essential element of this sculpture, creating an exaggerated image of Binz as an intellectual man, a “brain”: with his hands clasped behind his back and his projecting chin pushed forward in a seemingly combative manner, he recalls contemporary pictures by Dix in his expressionistic conception as well as examples from the field of caricature. “How can a sculptor portray someone whose main characteristics are specifically of an incorporeal nature? Voll has solved this problem by exaggerating the forms to such an extent that they were able to become signifiers of his essential spiritual and psychological attributes” (Anne-Marie Kassay-Friedländer, Der Bildhauer Christoph Voll (1897 - 1937), Worms 1994, p. 107).
Based on the oak version (Lempertz, Modern Art Auction, 4 December 2002, Lot 1097; 2002 - 2008, loan at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, Hoh Collection, Fürth), the Galleria del Levante had an edition of five bronzes – two of which are to be found in the artist’s estate – produced in 1960.