Renee Sintenis
(March 20, 1888 - April 22, 1965) |
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won 1928 bronze medal in art competitions of the Olympic Games for Art Work
| Name: |
Renee Sintenis |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Glatz |
| Nationality: |
German |
| Birth: |
March 20, 1888 |
| Death: |
April 22, 1965 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
won 1928 bronze medal in art competitions of the Olympic Games for |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Sculpture
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Biography
In 1915, the sculptor and graphic artist Renee Sintenis had a major breakthrough when her work was exhibited at the Berlin Secession and bought by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She had trained at the Stuttgart Art School, and then in Berlin. Her work was noticed by the influential gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim, with whom she had annual exhibitions, including a joint show with Marie Laurencin in 1925.
Sintenis specialized in sculptures of animals and figures and in portraiture. She often worked on a small scale, which contributed to her success, as private collectors could accommodate her art. She modeled her sculptures in clay, black wax, and terracotta, and cast them in bronze or silver. Her full-length bronze portrait of the Finnish runner Nurmi (1926, National galeries, Berlin) vividly captures his speed and grace, and her work was well received in an age in which sport had become mass entertainment, and the sportsman celebrated as the highest form of humanity.
Transformation is the subject of one of Sintenis's most important works, Daphne (1930, Wallraf-Richaxtz-Museum, Cologne). The bronze sculpture shows the nymph, whose story is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, at the moment in which she turns into a tree to escape her pursuer, Apollo. Transformations also take place across Sintenis's selfrepresentations. Her Tate Self-Portrait (1931), an austere terracotta mask etched with lines, is very different from more softly attractive earlier self-portraits. Sintenis forged her identity as a phenomenally successful artist - whose masculine clothes and hairstyle signaled her lesbianism, and who had changed her name from the more feminine 'Renate Alice' - against the backdrop of the emergence of the new woman in German inter-war culture. She is discussed in this context in Visions of the neuefrau (edited by Marsha Meskimmon and Shearer West, Aldershot 1995). Sintenis was the first woman sculptor to become a member of the Prussian Academy, in 1931. Although the rise of the Nazis stalled her career (she resigned from the Academy and her studio was bombed), after the war she was made Professor at the Berlin Academy. |
Samples of Work
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