Self Portrait
Renée SINTENIS
(German, 1888-1965)
Self Portrait
Dateca. 1920s
Mediumcast stone
Dimensionsoverall: 12 3/4 × 6 1/2 × 7 7/8 in. (32.4 × 16.5 × 20 cm) 3/1/2019
ClassificationSCULPTURE
Credit LineSBMA, Gift of Margaret P. Mallory
Object number1991.154.29
Subject(s)
- portraits
- self-portraits
- women
- heads and faces
Collection
- 20th century European
On View
On viewCollections
Label TextA prominent figure in the Weimar Republic’s experimental art scene that thrived in Germany between the two World Wars, Renée Sintenis looks uncompromisingly at the viewer in this self-portrait. Her delicate facial features are countered by a boyish hairstyle as well as a thick, athletic column for a neck. This portrait deliberately cultivates gender ambiguity in its subversion of established artistic and social conventions of the time. A related self-portrait was confiscated by the Nazis as “degenerate art” in 1937, attesting to the defiant power of Sintenis’ work.
1936
