Offered by Stéphane Renard Fine Art
An official artist of the Nazi regime, trained in Montparnasse in the 1930s, Arno Breker continued to sculpt after the fall of the Third Reich, producing large-scale public commissions in Germany and portraits of prominent figures. The two small bronzes presented here, dated around 1978, are part of a long tradition of prancing horses dating back to antiquity. The asymmetrical treatment of the two front legs and the inclination of the head make these two copies of the same artwork a highly decorative pair.
1. Arno Breker, a prolific sculptor, from the Bohemia of Montparnasse to the commissions from the Third Reich ... and from the Federal Republic of Germany
The son of a stone carver, Arno Breker studied fine art and anatomy in his native Elberfeld. At the age of 20, he entered the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. He moved to Paris in 1926, where he continued his training in the studio of Maillol, who dubbed him "the German Michelangelo of the twentieth century". He shared a studio with Alexandre Calder and frequented Jean Cocteau, Foujita, Brancusi, Pablo Picasso and other artists of the bohemian Paris of the time. It was also in Paris in 1933 that he met Demetra Messala, the daughter of a Greek diplomat who posed for Maillol and Picasso, whom he married in 1937. Having won the Prussian Prix de Rome in 1932, he left Paris to stay at the Villa Massimo, the German Academy in Rome.
Returning to Germany in 1934, his style evolved towards a more marked imitation of ancient sculpture. He created two monumental statues for Berlin's Olympic Stadium, before being appointed professor at the Berlin College of Fine Arts in 1937. He came to the attention of the Reich Propaganda Ministry, which awarded him several commissions and provided him with three large studios in which Breker produced many monumental sculptures to the glory of the regime. On June 23, 1940, Breker accompanied Adolf Hitler during a visit to Paris. During the Occupation, his political connections enabled him to intervene on behalf of many artists pursued by the Nazis: for example, he protected Pablo Picasso (then a Communist) from Kommandantur officers.
An exhibition of his work was held at the Orangerie in Paris in 1942. Faced with the abundance of male bodies depicted in heroic nudity, playwright Sacha Guitry, visiting the exhibition in the company of Jean Cocteau, is said to have told the latter: "If all these statues were getting an erection, we wouldn't be able to move around."
Most of Arno Breker's work was destroyed in Berlin at the end of the war in 1945 by bombing and intentional destruction perpetrated by soldiers of the victorious powers. After the fall of the Nazi regime, however, Arno Breker was never prosecuted. He opened a new studio in Düsseldorf, where he sculpted until his death in 1991.
He then carried out several public commissions in Germany (Bayreuth, Wuppertal), as well as portraits of numerous personalities, including King Mohammed V of Morocco, Léopold Sedar Senghor (commissioned by the Académie Française in 1978) and the two chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard. The Arno Breker Museum in Nörvenich is now exhibiting some of his artworks.
2. Related artworks: from the Wild Horses of the Quirinal to the Horses of Marly
The prancing horse is a major iconographic theme, found in a series of sculptures from Antiquity, the Renaissance and the Classical Age. Various photos from Arno Breker's studio in Berlin (9th photo in the gallery) confirm the predominant place of equine representations in his work (alongside male nude statues), and confirm that this reduced version created in 1978 is part of the artist's preferred repertoire.
Prancing horses are generally associated with a male figure in a group that, through a reference drawn from Antiquity, symbolizes man's domination over nature. In this respect, it is very interesting to compare our small bronzes with the horse forming part of a large sculpture by Arno Breker (made in 1936 and probably destroyed in 1945 - 10th photo of the gallery) depicting Alexander taming Bucephalus.
This statue is itself directly inspired by one of the best-known works of 18th-century French sculpture: the famous "Chevaux de Marly" (Horses of Marly - 11th photo of the gallery) , created by Guillaume Coustou and his workshop in 1745, two symmetrical groups each representing a rearing horse held by a groom. Intended for the decoration of the watering hole at Marly, they are now in the Louvre Museum, having long adorned the lower part of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées on the Place de la Concorde (where they have now been replaced by copies).
As the groom is completely hidden behind the prancing horse's body, it is very interesting to compare our little bronze with a view of the other group taken without the groom (13th photo of the gallery).
In addition to the similarities in the horse's position, the treatment of the horse's mane and tail demonstrates a desire to simplify forms, reminiscent of earlier models that may have inspired Coustou himself. This simplification brings our statuettes closer to one of the most famous antique models: the two gigantic groups of horse tamers, sometimes called Dioscuri, which adorn the fountain in front of the Quirinal Palace in Rome. Nearly 5.60 meters high, they were created in Roman times and come from Constantine's Baths. They were inspired by Greek originals that have since disappeared. It is particularly interesting to compare the treatment of the horse's mane (14th photo of the galleryt) with that of the mane on our statues, confirming Arno Breker's inspiration after the antique.
Exhibited in public spaces and widely reproduced in prints from the Renaissance onwards, these horses from the Quirinal are probably the matrix from which this theme was frequently represented, as shown by a sculpture housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (last photo in the gallery), one of the earliest examples. This sculpture by Bertoldo di Giovanni (after 1420 - 1491), entitled Bellerophon taming Pegasus, represents a variation on the same theme, adapted to this mythological episode by the addition of wings to the horse representing Pegasus.
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