RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901 - 1989) Head of a Dancer (Harald Kreutzberg).
Cast bronze, with a brown patina, mounted on a white marble base, 1937. Approximately 311 mm; 12 1/4 inches high (not including the base). A later casting, from an edition of 25. Signed, inscribed "xxx" and number stamped "25" along the upper edge, verso.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC.; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018.
This contemplative but powerful head by Richmond Barthé is his well known portrait of the Czech-born German dancer Harald Kreutzberg (1902 - 1968). Kreutzberg is an important figure in German ballet and modern dance whom Richmond Barthé befriended when he performed in New York in the 1930s. Barthé made several sculptures of the expressive dancer in busts and figures. Barthé himself had studied Martha Graham dance techniques in an effort to more fully understand the movement and form of dancing figures.
A plaster cast of this head was exhibited and illustrated in the 1974 Anacostia Museum catalogue The Barnett-Aden Collection. A similar bronze casting, the same size as this head, is illustrated in the 1995 The Catalogue of the Barnett-Aden Collection and dated "circa 1973." Other bronze casts of this head are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, the David C. Driskell Collection, the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the Kinsey Collection of African-American Art and History. Kinard p. 40; Auzenne, p. 42.
