While the works that Georg Kolbe's works made up to the early 1920s were still filled with expansive gestures, our "Sitzende" from 1928 is a document of the artist’s turn towards unity, which would play an increasingly important role in Georg Kolbe's later sculptural work. Despite the entangled limbs, the effect of this bronze is entirely conceived for the inner concentration of physicality. The harmony of all parts as a whole helps to create a contemplative expression, to depict the retreat into one's own inwardness, which gets a special sense of unity from the head that is slightly tilted downward. Kolbe had already experimented with the motif of the crossed knees in his "Sitzende" from 1926 and had developed it further to create a stronger inwardness in the present bronze. From 1926 Kolbe showed an increasing interest in the sculptural implementation of eccentric movement motifs, which he had become acquainted with through the dance performances of Josephine Baker and Gret Palucca, who also posed for him as models. A year after the sudden death of his wife Benjamine at the young age of 45, which had thrown the artist into a deep crisis, Kolbe created our "Sitzende", which, in addition to his enthusiasm for contemporary expressive dance, also expresses his contemplative state. The expression of the "seated" is not only contemplative, but also equally powerful, thus it symbolically testifies to Kolbe's renewed artistic urge to create.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that this outstanding bronze from the collection of the Frankfurt art historian Dr. Oswald Goetz, who was curator at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt from 1928 until his dismissal in 1938 due to his "non-Aryan descent" under the open-minded director Georg Swarzenski, who promoted national and international modernism. Kolbe had already created a portrait head of Swarzenski in 1915, and so the young Goetz has probably acquired Kolbe's "Sitzende“ during his Städel years under Swarzenski. After his dismissal in 1938, Goetz finally fled to the USA, where, due to his great knowledge of art history, he was curator at the Chicago Art Institute from 1940 to 1950 and from 1951 head of the painting department at Parke Bernet, New York, today Sotheby's. In December 1938, Goetz had to leave Kolbe's "Sitzende" in Frankfurt with his wife and their two daughters. It was only in 1946 that Goetz was able to see his family, who had stayed behind in Germany, again. Kolbe's "Sitzende" has remained in the family up until today. [JS]