Lot 56: Herzog, Oswald 1881 Haynau/Schlesien - 1945 Teplice Schmerz.

Herzog, Oswald
1881 Haynau/Schlesien - 1945 Teplice

Schmerz. 1922. Bronze with black patina. 36 x 20 x 14cm. Signed on the plinth: OH (ligated)erzog.

Provenance:
Artist's estate
Private Collection, Bonn


Exhibtion:
August-Macke Haus, Bonn: Otto Freundlich und die rheinische Kunstszene 1912 bis 1924, Bonn
2006.

Literature:
Exhib.cat. Otto Freundlich und die rheinische Kunstszene, published by Verein August Macke
Haus e.V., Bonn 2006, p. 270 (image)
Farbe und Form, Monatsschrift für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, published by Verlag "Farbe und Form"
Berlin W30, Reimannhaus, Januar 1925, p. 3 (image)
Oswald Herzog was one of Berlin's Novembergruppe's (1919 - 1931) most consistent members. In the style of the Futurists, he composed numerous art theoretical texts and connected these to his own artistic ventures. A tension between positive and negative polarities is prominent in all his sculptures, and he employs a fight between opposites as his central expressive, stylistic device. His figures, always suggestive of movement, border abstraction, and partially recall the rhythmic movement sculptures of Archipenko or Rudolf Bellings. As seen here, an emotion (Pain) intensifies out of the unnatural body positions: the surfaces are flattened while the body shapes extended or broken up in crystalline, nearly cubistic, form. As Herzog writes, "The rhythmic standard lies within the polarity of: large and small, strong and weak, rest and movement. A wealth of natural forms lies between these poles, as do manifold parts of life: to become and to pass away." (translated from the German in the exhibition catalogue: Novembergruppe, Galerie Bodo Niemann, Berlin 1993, p. 39).