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Lot Essay
Dr Ursel Berger has confirmed the authenticity of this sculpture.
Tänzer Nijinsky was conceived in 1913 after the successful 1911-1912 tour of Germany by the celebrated Ballet russes and the meeting between its star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, and the Berlin sculptor Georg Kolbe, whose mastery of the idealized nude made him one of the most famous and successful German sculptors of his time.
Kolbe was enraptured by Nijinsky's performance in Le spectre de la rose, where he witnessed 'im Mann etwas unverbindlich Voruebergehendes, einen satanischen Zug' (G. Kolbe in a letter to Swarzenski, 3 February 1913, quoted in U. Berger, Georg Kolbe, exh. cat., Berlin, 1998, p. 65). Kolbe was most likely introduced to the dancer by Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Berlin museums, and towards the end of 1912, Nijinsky visited the artist's Berlin studio to model for the sculpture. The Georg-Kolbe-Museum in Berlin has a sketchbook of the flurry of drawings inspired by this visit (GKM inv. no. Z121-169).
These performances, modeling and related sketches formed the basis of the artist's creative process behind Tänzer Nijinsky and the celebrated Heine-Denkmal in Frankfurt-am-Main in honour of German-Jewish poet and writer Heinrich Heine (fig. 1). Although the figure for the Denkmal was inspired by the choreography of Le spectre de la rose, the distinctive horizontal orientation of this figure relates to a 1910 photograph by Eugène Druet of Nijinsky performing the Danse siamoise from the ballet Les orientales (fig. 2), which was found in the artist's studio after his death.
Michel Fokine's choreography and Léon Bakst's costumes for the Danse siamoise were inspired by the dancers from the Royal Court of Siam who had performed in St. Petersburg in October 1900, although in the present portrayal of the dancer, the sculptor famed for his nudes has consciously dispelled with the elaborate costume, headdress and jewelry of Bakst's design.
After a hiatus caused by the First World War, when Kolbe enlisted in the army, he revisited the plaster cast in 1919, smoothing the surface before casting an edition of 17 bronzes, of which this is one, where in the opinion of Ursel Berger, 'the elegance of the movement comes into greater force' (Berger, op. cit., p. 231). Other casts of this bronze are in the Detroit Institute of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the City Art Museum of St Louis, the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf and the Kunsthalle Hamburg.
Tänzer Nijinsky was conceived in 1913 after the successful 1911-1912 tour of Germany by the celebrated Ballet russes and the meeting between its star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, and the Berlin sculptor Georg Kolbe, whose mastery of the idealized nude made him one of the most famous and successful German sculptors of his time.
Kolbe was enraptured by Nijinsky's performance in Le spectre de la rose, where he witnessed 'im Mann etwas unverbindlich Voruebergehendes, einen satanischen Zug' (G. Kolbe in a letter to Swarzenski, 3 February 1913, quoted in U. Berger, Georg Kolbe, exh. cat., Berlin, 1998, p. 65). Kolbe was most likely introduced to the dancer by Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Berlin museums, and towards the end of 1912, Nijinsky visited the artist's Berlin studio to model for the sculpture. The Georg-Kolbe-Museum in Berlin has a sketchbook of the flurry of drawings inspired by this visit (GKM inv. no. Z121-169).
These performances, modeling and related sketches formed the basis of the artist's creative process behind Tänzer Nijinsky and the celebrated Heine-Denkmal in Frankfurt-am-Main in honour of German-Jewish poet and writer Heinrich Heine (fig. 1). Although the figure for the Denkmal was inspired by the choreography of Le spectre de la rose, the distinctive horizontal orientation of this figure relates to a 1910 photograph by Eugène Druet of Nijinsky performing the Danse siamoise from the ballet Les orientales (fig. 2), which was found in the artist's studio after his death.
Michel Fokine's choreography and Léon Bakst's costumes for the Danse siamoise were inspired by the dancers from the Royal Court of Siam who had performed in St. Petersburg in October 1900, although in the present portrayal of the dancer, the sculptor famed for his nudes has consciously dispelled with the elaborate costume, headdress and jewelry of Bakst's design.
After a hiatus caused by the First World War, when Kolbe enlisted in the army, he revisited the plaster cast in 1919, smoothing the surface before casting an edition of 17 bronzes, of which this is one, where in the opinion of Ursel Berger, 'the elegance of the movement comes into greater force' (Berger, op. cit., p. 231). Other casts of this bronze are in the Detroit Institute of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the City Art Museum of St Louis, the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf and the Kunsthalle Hamburg.