Sale: 528 / Modern Art, June 11. 2022 in Munich Lot 448

 

448
Ewald Mataré
Kleine liegende Kuh, 1929.
Bronze with brown patina
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 100,000 / $ 108,000

(incl. surcharge)
Kleine liegende Kuh. 1929.
Bronze with brown patina.
Schilling 56a. With the artist's signet. Apart from this copy, only 26 other copies are known. 7 x 26.5 x 11 cm (2.7 x 10.4 x 4.3 in).
[AR].
• A work by the great master of animal sculpting that is perfect in form.
• Cows and horses are his preferred motifs and stand for a wholeness and harmony that is impressively reflected by the compact form.
• Ewald Mataré made the most significant contribution to German sculpting with his works from the 1920s/30s
• Fascinating provenance
.

We are grateful to Dr. Kufferath (neé Schilling), Düren, for her kind support in cataloging this lot. The work is listed under no. 63 a in the revised edition of the still unpublished catalog raisonné.

PROVENANCE: Collection Fritz Schön, Berlin/Ascona, Switzerland/Toronto, Canada.
Ever since family-owned.

“I am carving a lying cow. An animal that always has a new effect on me, this animal is completely without thoughts, completely feeling and thus it rises up big and pure." Ewald Mataré, 1925, quoted from: Giesela Fiedler-Bender, Kaiserslautern, Heilbronn 1981.

This small reclined cow by Mataré, which emanates so much calm and grace, looks back on an eventful history. In the 1920s it used to be part of the renowned collection of Fritz Schön from Werdau. The successful wool manufacturer and intellectual was part of the social circle around the Berlin Secession and an acquaintance of big names like Julius Meier-Graefe or Eugen Spiro. His collection comprises paintings by Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and Jacoba van Heemskerck. When he relocated to Ascona in Switzerland in 1931, he gave a large part of his collection into the trustworthy hands of Ferdinand Möller in Berlin. Shortly before the “Degenerate Art“ campaign began, Möller sent the works belonging to the Schön family to Switzerland and kept them safe from the hands of the NS regime. When Fritz Schön and his family emigrated to Canada over the USA in the late 1930s, he was able to take his collection with him.
In Canada the family met Max Stern ofDominion Gallery, and so works from the Collection Schön were sold to Max Stern by the son Robert. Among them the painting “Landschaft. Bild I“ by Jacoba van Heemskerck, which today is in possession of the Berlinische Galerie, where it reminds us of the past Berlin collector. However, not so Mataré‘s recumbent cow, which has remained in possession of the family up until today and is reminiscent of the passion that Fritz Schön showed in compiling this extraordinary collection and how it was preserved across international borders.



448
Ewald Mataré
Kleine liegende Kuh, 1929.
Bronze with brown patina
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 100,000 / $ 108,000

(incl. surcharge)