Renée Sintenis depicted animal and human forms alike in a simplified, streamlined style, their elongated limbs arranged in balletic poses. In 1931 she became the second woman (after Käthe Kollwitz) to be admitted to the Academy of Arts; when the Nazis came to power, she was expelled and her work targeted as “degenerate.” This drypoint of a baby bear, recalls her most famous work: the “Berlin bear,” one of the city’s most beloved public sculptures and the source for the Golden Bear statuette of the Berlin Film Festival.
Exhibition Label: Women’s Work: Art by Women in Germany, 1900–1933, 2021, Erin Maynes.
