Two bowls players

Descrizione

Grete Schick was one of the artists of the so-called “lost generation”, who were forgotten after the Second World War and only rediscovered in the 1980s. Schick, from Frankfurt, studied at the Essen School of Arts and Crafts and then travelled to Italy and Paris on a scholarship. She returned to Germany in 1935, but was unable to gain a foothold as a sculptor due to National Socialist art and cultural policies and subsequently ceased her artistic activities in the 1940s. Schick’s oeuvre was only rediscovered after her death. Her estate only comprised around 20 works, including terracotta figures and, above all, wooden sculptures; the stylistic proximity to Ernst Barlach is unmistakable, but Grete Schick found her very own powerful and expressive visual language. This can also be seen in the wooden sculpture “Two Bowls Players”. The two seemingly fused and block-like figures with childishly large heads are depicted in a dynamically bent posture playing skittles. The vital and largely unsmoothed wooden surface clearly shows the traces of the carving tool. Schick’s design is unemotional and yet extremely expressive.