German artist Renée Sintenis—perhaps best known for creating the 1932 “Berlin Bear” sculpture now associated with winners at the Berlin Film Festival—was an active member of the vibrant Weimar art world. She epitomized the “new woman” of the 1920s, many of whom were gay, wore jackets and ties, had pageboy haircuts, smoked, and frequented popular gay and lesbian nightclubs in Berlin.
To pursue her art training in the early 1900s, Sintenis broke ties with her family, who did not approve of her chosen profession. She supported herself modeling for artists (including sculptor Georg Kolbe, who became a mentor), and became friends with writers, photographers, and artists such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Hugo Erfurt. By 1917, Sintenis was exhibiting her signature small-scale bronze sculptures of animals and athletes in motion at the Berlin Secession, and her reputation grew. That same year, conforming to societal conventions, she married painter Emil Rudolf Weiss, though she continued to take part in the Berlin queer scene. In the 1920s, Sintenis enjoyed financial success with numerous sales to bourgeois collectors and several shows at Berlin’s renowned Flechtheim Gallery. Self-Portrait dates from 1931, the year Sintenis was admitted to the prestigious Academy of Arts in Berlin. She depicts herself with a mask-like, androgynous visage. Likely created with the aid of a mirror, it is one of several portrait busts with similar expressions that Sintenis made between 1915 and 1945 in terra cotta and bronze.