Lot 152 D α

“He presents vagabonds of the Apocalypse, pilgrims who are perhaps pausing to reflect during their journey, wandering after a vision, preaching repentance and proclaiming the end of days; women dancing eerily at a church ale; rushing avengers, prophets called out by comets and fiery skies. […] all these people of Barlach are wandering after miracles” (Cal Einstein, Bronzen von Ernst Barlach, exh. cat. Galerie Flechtheim Berlin, Berlin 1930, n.d.).
In 1926, when the gallerist Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937) became responsible for managing Ernst Barlach’s work as a sculptor, he encouraged the artist to occupy himself more intensely with bronze casting. In 1930 they collaborated to create a programme of casts featuring twenty works based on models from the years 1907 to 1930: these included “Der Rächer”, which Barlach had modelled in clay in 1914, cast in plaster and carried out in the form of a wooden sculpture in 1922. However, their plans for a numbered edition of ten bronze casts was never fully realised. Following Barlach’s death in 1938, the Noack foundry produced an additional, unnumbered edition.
The powerful figure depicts the avenger with his upper body leaning forward and his left leg raised as if they were resisting the force of gravity. Both hands encircle the hilt of a sword held above his back. In contrast to the gently rounded forms of his early works, the body here is defined by angular surfaces juxtaposed against one another. These emphasise the tension and dynamism of the pose and demonstrate Barlach’s engagement with the modern formal principles of cubism and futurism, which he converted into an independent, expressively concentrated visual idiom” (cf. Sebastian Giesen (ed.), Der Bildhauer Ernst Barlach, exh. cat. Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg 2007, p. 113).