MARCKS, GERHARD
1889 Berlin–1981 Burgbrohl

Title: Freya.
Date: 1949 (draft).
Technique: Bronze, dark-brown patinated.
Measurement: 170 x 52 x 42 cm.
Notation: Artist's signet between the feet.
Foundry mark: Foundry mark on the rear edge of the base GUSS BARTH BERLIN V.


This casting must have been made before 1970, as it bears the foundry mark ‘GUSS BARTH BERLIN V’ and the Barth foundry moved from Berlin to Rinteln in 1970.



Provenance:
- - St. Georg Hospital, Hamburg

- Klaas Hendrik Vos Collection, Hörstel (according to the donor)

- Private collection, Hesse


Literature:
- Hartog, Arie: Gerhard Marcks - Das plastische Werk 1973-1981, Bielefeld 2004, Cat. rais. no. 537, ill.



- One of the most beautiful life-size bronze sculptures from the artist’s mature period

- The graceful nude figure of the Norse goddess embodies Gerhard Marcks’ humanistic view of humanity

- The catalogue raisonné lists 10 casts, some of which are in public collections, including the MoMA in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston



Stages of a Life

Gerhard Marcks ranks among the most important German sculptors of the twentieth century. His works—portraits, figures, nudes, and animal representations—stand as exemplary achievements of a sculptural language that, after the Second World War, translated classical tradition into a new and contemporary form.

Born in Berlin in 1889, Gerhard Marcks began producing animal studies at the Berlin Zoological Garden at an early age before turning to sculpture in 1907. Sharing a studio with Richard Scheibe, he deepened his artistic practice, while also receiving important impulses from August Gaul and Georg Kolbe.

After military service in Flanders, Marcks began teaching at the School of Applied Arts in Berlin in 1918. In 1919, he was appointed to the Bauhaus in Weimar, where he directed the pottery workshop in Dornburg, before becoming professor at the School of Applied Arts at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle an der Saale in 1925.

Following the National Socialist seizure of power, Marcks was dismissed from his position in 1933, and his works were classified as “degenerate.” After the Second World War, the artist taught in Hamburg from 1946 to 1950 and subsequently lived and worked independently in Cologne, where he created important memorials and commemorative monuments for public spaces.



Figure and Nude Between Tradition and Avant-Garde

Soon after the end of the war, a renewed flourishing of sculpture emerged in Germany, reconnecting with the expressively stylized figuration of the prewar period in an effort to render visible cultural and ethical values thought to have been lost and to give them form through the human figure.

This is equally true of Gerhard Marcks, whose sculptural vision was shaped by a profound faith in the dignity and integrity of the human being. Decisive inspiration came from his travels to Italy and Greece in 1927–28, where he was deeply impressed by the proportion, calmness, and formal unity of ancient sculpture.

Marcks’s figures are neither heroically elevated nor conceived as portraits. Rather, they function as universal archetypes in which the human form becomes the bearer of humanity and timeless order.



Freya

Created in 1949, the life-sized bronze Freya presents a standing female nude of restrained yet graceful presence. The balanced contrapposto and the casually hip-resting arm lend the figure a natural sense of movement, while the downcast eyes convey quiet introspection and meditative composure.

With assurance, the artist combines the traditional formal vocabulary of classical sculpture with a distinctly modern conception of the figure. Freya exemplifies Gerhard Marcks’s postwar image of humanity: an ideal of inner poise and quiet presence.

Doris Hansmann



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#Gerhard Marcks #Expressionism #Bauhaus #Germany #Modern Art #1940s #Sculptures.







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