Part of the 2022 four-part series "Ode to Female Artists"
Wallpiece, tribute to Renée Sintenis, German sculptures,1888 – 1965, Berlin-Germany.
Renée Sintenis, also known as Frau Emil R. Weiss, was a German sculptor and graphic artist who worked in Berlin. She mainly made medals with small animal sculptures, female nudes, portraits and sports figurines. She is best known for her Berlin Bear sculptures, which were used as prizes at the annual Berlin Film Festival. From 1913 she regularly exhibited her sculptures and was highly valued by her colleagues from the Free Secession, the most important Berlin artists' association, including Max Liebermann, Max Beckmann and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The opening of a gallery in Berlin in 1922 made her the main protagonist of the well-known Flechtheim art circle during those years. The art-interested public fell in love with her athletic figures, portraits of friends and the small-format self-portraits. Moreover, because of her body size, slender figure, charisma, confident, fashionable attitude and androgynous beauty, she was often portrayed by artists such as her husband, Emil Rudolf Weiß and Georg Kolbe, and by photographers, such as Hugo Erfurth, Fritz Eschen and Frieda Riess. She perfectly embodied the 'new woman' type of the 1920s, even if she seemed rather reserved. During the Weimar Republic, Renée Sintenis became an internationally recognized artist, with exhibitions at the Berlin Nationalgalerie, in Berlin, in Paris, the Tate Gallery, in London, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, Glasgow and Rotterdam. Her small images of athletes (boxers, footballers, runners) and portrait busts of their circle of friends have been included in public and private collections around the world.
