Ernst Barlach
1870 - 1938

Russische Bettlerin II. 1932.
Bronze.
Lower left with the signature. On the back with the foundry mark “H. Noack Berlin”. One of 31 unnumbered copies. 23.5 x 41.5 x 18.3 cm (9.2 x 16.3 x 7.2 in).
Inside, with the engraved inscription “III”
Posthumous cast after November 1938.
• A striking depiction of dignity and human suffering, as Barlach had experienced on his 1906 journey to southern Russia (today's Ukraine).
• Notable provenance: formerly in the Hermann Lange Collection, Krefeld.
• Other copies of this bronze are at, among others, the Ernst Barlach Haus in Hamburg, the Staatliches Museum Schwerin, the Seattle Art Museum in Washington, USA, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

PROVENANCE: Hermann Lange Collection, Krefeld (family-owned ever since).

EXHIBITION: Ernst Barlach, Kunsthalle Bremen 1959, Cat. No. 496 (different copy).
Ernst Barlach. Wege und Wandlungen. Vom Jugendstil zum Expressionismus, Museumsberg Flensburg, Ribe Kunstmuseum, Ernst Barlach Foundation Güstrow, Güstrow 2002, cat. no. 14 (different copy)
Ernst Barlach House. Hermannmann F. Reetsma Foundation, Hamburg 1962, cat. no. 14 (illustrated) (different copy).

LITERATURE: Elisabeth Laur, Ernst Barlach. Das plastische Werk, vol. 2, Güstrow 2006, CR no. 517
Friedrich Schult, Ernst Barlach, vol. 1: Das plastische Werk, Hamburg 1960, CR no. 71
-.-
Elmar Jansen, Ernst Barlach. Werke und Werkentwürfe aus fünf Jahrzehnten, Academy of Arts of the GDR/State Museums of Berlin (East), Berlin 1981, vol. 3, no. 61 (different copy)
Ernst Barlach. Artist of the North, Kunsthalle Rostock, Hamburg/Güstrow 1998, p. 84 (different copy).
"In Russia, I saw this astonishing unity of internal and external, this symbolic: that is how we are as human beings—all of us, at heart, beggars and troubled souls. That is why I had to express what I saw.."
Ernst Barlach 1920