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All auctions / Sculptures / Entomologiskt kvinnorov | Eric Grate
Brownpatinated Bronze Signed Eric Grate and numbered I/I casted1950 Foundry mark H Bergman Cire Perdue H: 59 cm Unique replica of the monumental outside "Karolinska" in Stockholm 175 000 SEK A monumental version of the bronze sculpture "Det entomologiska kvinnorovet" was created by Eric Grate 1956–1958 and placed on a four meter high granite pillar immediately outside the entrance to Karolinska Institutet. The sculpture represents three cubed figures, a woman and a man, who are leaping to deliver a third person without limbs. The abducted lady has a hat or crown on her head and the man who carries her is equipped with insect-like antennae in his jaw. Eric Grate got the idea for the sculpture already during his stay in Paris during the 1920s. There, Miss Violetta, the lady without arms and legs, showed up for payment on the pleasure field. He worked already from the year 1930 with this motif, first as a relief in terracotta and later in bronze and limestone, and in the early 1950s also in the form of a free-standing sculpture in a small format. The sculpture was commissioned on the initiative of the area's architect, Ture Ryberg, by the Norwegian Art Council, which in 1955 commissioned Eric Grate to make a proposal for a sculpture at the Karolinska Institute's entrance. Receiving The proposal received in 1957 caused protests by the receiving authority. The majority of Karolinska Institutet's teachers' collegium voted 19 - 6 against the Cultural Council's proposal and made a submission to the King. Maj:t in the matter. As an argument against, the inappropriateness of decorating the medical college with one work, "whose choice of motif is more for the thought of physical and psychological diseases and the degrading powers of the disease than for the healing ability of the medical art". The Arts Council used the student union's positive attitude in its ironically worded statement to the King. Maj:t och pointed out, among other things, that eventually the college of teachers would probably mainly consist of such more positively disposed medics. After the sculpture was erected in 1958, a press debate broke out. A medical professor sought by proxy to force Eric Grate to put his arms and legs on the kidnapped lady. The debate also led to Axel Hirsch donating Nils Möllerberg's more serene and naturalistic Mother and Child to the institute as a consolation for the protesting teachers. "The group is set up on a tall granite pillar, and it looks like a fantasy capital or a large flower on a stone stem. That it has a fine decorative value as it now stands seems obvious. " - Ulf Linde in Dagens Nyheter 1958-09-02, in an article in the press debate about the sculpture
Estimate:$17,614.45
To the auctionView all items fromScandinavian Fine ArtorSculptures
Estimate:
$17,614.45
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