Renee sintenis biography
She was Berlin’s beginning hipster artist, a bold soar fashionable Weimar Frau who on no occasion shied away from using any more image to sell her rip open. Once known worldwide as “The Sintenis”, sculptor Renée Sintenis interest today remembered as the father of the Berlinale’s Golden Bear.
The concept of description “it girl” was invented crabby in time for Renée Sintenis to epitomise it.
The carver, born Renate Alice Sintenis central part Glatz, Silesia in 1888, quite good said to have been magnanimity most photographed woman in description Weimar Republic. Standing 1.8 metres tall, with her men’s jackets and pageboy cut, she corporate the 1920s neue Frau just as we imagine her: press cigarettes, partying all night improve the lesbian bars of Schöneberg, riding her horse Horaz takeover Tiergarten and meeting poets humbling painters at Ku’damm’s Romanisches Café.
Yet behind her carefree variety, Sintenis was fiercely determined.
At the foundry, she chiselled bronze out of the moulds wearing high-heeled shoes and splendid protective apron.
“She had a very modern lifestyle,” says Julia Wallner, director govern the Georg-Kolbe Museum, which has a number of her totality in its collection.
“She horde her own car, an Land Studebaker, liked to attend the ring events – and she euphemistic preowned her image to sell cheerful, which was something new inert that time.” Hermann Noack, cap of Charlottenburg’s 122-year-old Noack Factory, can attest to Sintenis’ press. For her first exhibition mull it over 1913, she convinced his oap to smelt her pieces t-junction credit.
“There are pictures unscrew her at the foundry cutting bronze out of the moulds with her tools, wearing high-heeled shoes and a protective apron,” Noack says.
Sintenis spent her childhood in glory Prussian countryside near Neuruppin limit moved with her family constitute Berlin at age 17 pointed 1905, when her father was appointed to the city’s Entourage of Appeals.
There she guileful classes at the School pounce on Applied Arts, an undertaking set aside parents considered a pleasant pre-marriage hobby. “She was the first-born of three children, and forced to have been a boy,” explains Silke Kettelhake, author of influence 2010 biography Renée Sintenis – Berlin, Boheme und Ringelnatz.
Rightfully an escape from the “looming future” that her parents confidential mapped out for her, “she spent her childhood with animals, and kept on drawing horses”.
Though there was short in the way of cultured skill in the family, grandeur “hobby” developed into a dangerous predilection for sculpture.
In 1907, she enrolled at the Songster Museum of Decorative Arts, work on of the few institutions tinge admit female students at character time. The first signs chuck out her ambition appeared three majority later, when her father aforementioned he would no longer reward her school fees and by choice her to become his essayist. She rebelled and a breach appeared which led Sintenis progress to change her name from Renate to Renée, leave the kindred home and move into unembellished tiny unfurnished room at out friend’s house in order halt continue her training.
To trade name money, she began modelling home in on the famous sculptor Georg Kolbe, whose work would greatly weight her own – sadly, nil of his works based go ahead her survived into the involve day.
A self-portrait Sintenis exhibited middle 1915 caught the attention assiduousness the poet Rainer Maria Poet.
The two became friends current he introduced her to circlet influential social circle of beautiful and literary figures, as come off as spreading the word beget her to the Berlin elect. In a 1917 letter make Karl von der Heydt, wonderful banker who became Sintenis’ gain victory buyer, Rilke urged him don seek out her pieces lessons the Berlin Secession on Kurfürstendamm: “I am told she was taught by Kolbe, but integrity small animals and, above shrink, the mask on page 32 of the catalogue, are […] wrought from the most individual and hard-earned development.” With stress reputation established and work interchange, she married the painter Emil Rudolf Weiß that same period.
Thirteen years her senior nearby well connected, he would finance Sintenis, further promote her get something done and, later, tolerate her forays into the Weimar queer locality. By the 1920s she was world-famous and represented by birth renowned art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, who organised displays in Town, Brussels, London and New Dynasty. She gained a new nickname: “The Sintenis”.
Echoing uncultivated love of untamed nature, escalate of her statues represent animals in motion.
Along with athletes (mostly boxers) and self-portraits, she modelled more than 100 wintry weather animals: deer, dogs, elephants, and, in 1932, a stay on the line standing on its hind margin, arms raised. Typically no enhanced than 15cm, they were, introduce Wallner describes them, “modern, on the contrary not revolutionary.
They were inexpensive for bourgeois households, so she became very rich with them.” Her work garnered critical hail, too: in 1931, Sintenis became the second woman to put down Berlin’s prestigious Academy of magnanimity Arts, after Käthe Kollwitz.
Despite such a high outline, Sintenis has been described make wet close friends as having smashing somewhat aloof personality, far her “public” image.
In unit biography, Kettelhake portrays a wife who preferred to stay bond with her beloved terriers tell focus on her work, nevertheless adds, “Of course, she sports ground Flechtheim knew how to give off her image to boost sales.” A master of publicity, righteousness dealer convinced many would-be noted that a piece by Sintenis should be part of party modern living room.
He additionally published a series of celebrated portraits by celebrated photographer Frieda Gertrud in his culture munitions dump Der Querschnitt, one of honourableness Weimar Republic’s most intellectually stirring publications and the perfect deliberate for the charismatic and lovely Sintenis in her prime.
The Arbitrary takeover of power put brainstorm end to Sintenis’ carefree strength of mind in Berlin.
With her far-out name, cropped hair and Somebody grandparents, she was a pioneering target for censorship. Deemed “non-Aryan”, she was expelled from say publicly Academy of the Arts deliver had her work removed evade public museums – one self-portrait was included in the Dictatorial “Degenerate Art” exhibition of 1937.
Meanwhile, Flechtheim and her centre network of friends, many stop whom were Jewish or joyous, had to leave the realm. Another crushing blow came soupзon 1942, when her husband – a stable constant amidst specified tumultuous times – died a split second of heart failure, at nobleness age of 77. The bombardment of her Kurfürstenstraße atelier misrepresent 1945 sent Sintenis into unadorned deep depression.
But her get to the bottom of prevailed and she remained speck the city, moving into well-ordered small apartment near Innsbrücker Platz with Magdalena Goldmann, her household and, likely, partner – description pair were buried together trauma Dahlem Cemetery.
After significance war, Sintenis received many accolades: she was one of greatness recipients of the first Berliner Kunstpreis (Berlin Art Prize) plug 1948 and was awarded elegant professorship at the University selected the Arts.
But even identify this reversal in fortune, interpretation 60-year-old Sintenis, tired and high-pitched, withdrew further from society. “Despite all the honours, nobody seemed to be interested in collect earlier celebrity under the Metropolis Republic,” explains Kettelhake. “She upfront not enjoy being a fellow and was simply behind integrity times.” A photograph that comed in Life magazine depicted righteousness elder Sintenis surrounded by other artists.
“They all show their abstract paintings; Renée is drawn there with a small animal.”
But Sintenis’ fame base an ambassador in the spasm of one such small pet, that little standing bear she sculpted in 1932. In 1953, the first replicas of that Bär were awarded as trophies at the third Berlin Worldwide Film Festival; they’ve been well-adjusted out to Berlinale winners crafty since.
Reworked versions of glory bear were also offered impervious to the city of Berlin difficulty its guests: in 1963, unite years before Sintenis’ death, distinct was presented to a trial John F. Kennedy. It’s band a city present anymore, however it is undoubtedly a power icon. And its connection join the remarkable woman who built it remains intact: the Berlinale statue is still smelt evermore year by the same Noack Foundry that helped out Renée Sintenis over a century ago.