Lot 28: Oswald Herzog (1881-1939)

Oswald Herzog (1881-1939)
Entfliehen
signed and dated 'O.Herzog 1920' (on the base)
bronze with brown patina
17in. (45cm.) long
Conceived in 1920

Altenburg, Lindenau-Museum, Internationale Sprachen der Kunst: Gemlde, Zeichnungen und Skulpturen der Klassischen Moderne aus der Sammlung Hoh, Aug - Oct 1998, no.37 (illustrated p.107); this exhibition later travelled to Osnabrück, Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, Dortmund, Museum am Ostwall and Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum
Hamburg, Ernst Barlach Haus, Stiftung Hermann F. Reemtsma, Kunst ohne Grenzen, Werke der Internationalen Avantgarde von 1910 bis 1940 aus der Sammlung Hoh, Jan - April 2005, no.23 (illustrated p.45)

O. Herzog, Plastik, Sinfonie des Lebens, Berlin, 1921 (another cast illustrated pl.III)
Illustrierte Rundschau, Vehlhagen und Clasing, vol.39, no.2, Göttingen, 1921, p.116 (another cast illustrated p.117)
U. Peters & A. Legde, Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergänge im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Moderne Zeiten, die Sammlung zum 20.Jahrhundert, vol.III, Nuremberg, 2000 (this cast illustrated p.85) K. Drenker-Nagels, 'Rhythmus und Dynamik, Oswald Herzog - ein expressionistischer Bildhauer', in Weltkunst, no.3, Mar 2002, pp. 397 - 399 (this cast illustrated p.397, fig.1)
A. Beloubek-Hammer, Die schnen Gestalten der besseren Zukunft, Cologne, 2007 (original plaster cast illustrated p.411, fig.403)

Anon. sale, Christie's London, 8 Dec 1994, lot 225
Alfred Hoh collection, Germany
On loan to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 1995-2008

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
"Oswald Herzog was an established Berlin artist by the time he became associated with the famous Sturm circle led by publisher and gallery owner Herwarth Walden, who sponsored an exhibition of the artist in the Galerie Der Sturm in 1919 ... As early as 1919 Herzog was included in the membership of the Novembergruppe whose political and artistic activities were the focal point of post-War cultural life in Berlin. He stressed that Futurism and Expressionism were to be succeeded by a Neue Sachlichkeit in which the artist would no longer allow his will to speak through the depiction of objects but would become like nature itself, his creative volition clothed in rhythmic, objective form. 'Rhythm is the proportion of time and space - the absolute law of growth and decay' he wrote later.

By 1920 the human form of his sculptures had dissolved more and more; individualized modelling was minimized and soon disappeared. By 1918-20, as can be seen in Knieende, the human figure had been elongated, twisted and distorted until it was only vaguely recognizable in its basic shape." (K. Breuer, German Expressionist Sculpture, Exh. cat., Los Angeles, 1984, p. 100.)

A larger version of this sculpture is housed in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

No death date is known for Herzog who seems to have died during the Second World War. His sculptures are rare.