"Derby" – a highly dynamic "crowd sculpture"

A large part of the motifs in Fritz Koenig's graphic and sculptural oeuvre revolve around cavalry, animal herds and animal bodies, as well as horse breeding. Koenig showed an early interest in horses in his first childhood drawings, in later years this interest would become his life’s focal point and a lifelong fascination. In the mid-1950s, his travels took him to Greece and Egypt, where he visited a stud farm for thoroughbred Arabian horses in the desert in El Zahra near Cairo. In 1956 Koenig traveled to the Camargue in France where he saw the herds of cattle roaming the landscape, a sight typical of the region. In his artistic work, an intensive preoccupation with the depiction of animal herds began. The bronze of the horsemen pressing ahead close to another should also be seen in this context. From then on he created so-called "crowd sculptures", rarely showing crowds of people, but rather herds of animals, as in the bronze "Camargue", but also groups of humans and animals, as in "Reitergruppe" or in the present bronze "Derby".
To Koenig the array of figures serves the purpose of a rhythmic arrangement of uniform individual bodies, which he forms into a figurative whole. "Derby" with its wide, massive, expansive form and what appear to be dozens of horse's hooves is probably the work in which Koenig takes movement to the peak of expressiveness: "Movement is increased to the extreme," Kurt Martin stated in the accompanying text in 1961 of the solo exhibition in the New York Staempfli Gallery about this bronze and also the catalog raisonné of Fritz Koenig's works speaks of a "highly dynamic ensemble" (Clarenbach, p. 13).
Despite its massiveness, the work seems to hover a little above the ground, only a few horse's hooves actually touch the ground, human and animal merge into an inseparable whole in their coordinated sequence of movements: the result is a work of great dynamics and vitality.

Breeding and horse riding

It is these sculptural depictions of horses and horsemen in particular that fascinated the passionate horseman Fritz Koenig in the 1960s. In 1959, the artist bought his first thoroughbred Arabian mares. In 1960, the year our bronze was created, he made his dream of an own stud farm come true. He had his house and studio, as well as the stables built after his own designs, in a spot surrounded by meadows, forests and fields in Ganslberg near Landshut, which marked the beginning of his own endeavors in horsebreeding. From then on, the fascination for the motif of the rider and the horse was reflected even more intensely in his artistic work. In addition to the impressive work "Derby", other works related to his passion such as "Nächtlicher Ritt" (1959), "Kleiner Reiter" (1959), "Kleine Quadriga" (1961), "Stuterei" (1971 ), "Paarung" (1972) or "Rosssprung" (1982) also came into existence.

At the peak of his career

At the time the bronze offered here was created, Fritz Koenig's artistic career was at a high point: in 1957 he received a scholarship for the Villa Massimo in Rome, in 1958 he exhibited at the German pavilion at the world exhibition in Brussels, and also at the XXIX Venice Biennale that same year. In the following year, as well as in 1964, the artist was also represented at documenta II and III in Kassel. In 1961, the New York gallery owner George W. Staempfli presented his first solo exhibition of Fritz Koenig's works, in which a copy of the bronze offered here was also shown. A second solo exhibition in New York followed in 1963. Fritz Koenig gained international recognition for, among other things, his monumental sculpture "The Sphere / Große Kugelkaryatide" for the fountain (architect: Minoru Yamasaki) on the plaza between the towers of the World Trade Center in New York (design 1967/68). At that time his design prevailed against one from Henry Moore. The sculpture was severely damaged in the 9/11 attacks and serves as a memorial in New York’s Liberty Park today.
The Staempfli Gallery in New York and the Emily Barclay McFadden Harrison Staempfli Collection

The work offered here presumably ended up in the collection of Emily Barclay McFadden Harrison Staempfli after Fritz Koenig's solo exhibition at the Staempfli Gallery in New York. In second marriage she was married to Koenig's good friend, the New York gallery owner George W. Staempfli. Emily Staempfli was also an important supporter and patron in the New York art world. She acquired works of her good friend Andy Warhol from early on and was in circles around luminaries like Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. Her path into the art world had probably already been charted by her grandfather John H. McFadden (1850–1921), who contributed his art collection, and ultimately his legacy, to the founding of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1928. Emily Barclay McFadden only began collecting art after her divorce and moved to New York in the 1950s. She acquired works by Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Paul Gauguin, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and Niki de Saint Phalle, until her collection became known throughout America. In 1968, the Philadelphia Museum of Art dedicated an exhibition to her collection. After her death, our work, along with the other works, became part of the collection of her son Randolph Harrison. [CH]