RICHMOND BARTHÉ (1901 - 1989)
Head of a Dancer (Harald Kreutzberg).

Cast bronze with a dark brown patina, mounted on a white marble base, 1937. Approximately 311 mm; 12 1/4 inches high (not including the base). A later casting. Signed and number stamped "27" along the upper edge, verso.

Provenance: acquired from Adolphus Ealey, Washington, DC; private collection, Washington, DC. Adolphus Ealey was the curator of the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC. from 1969 until 1989.

This contemplative but powerful head by Richmond Barthé is his well known portrait of the Czech-born German dancer Harald Kreutzberg (1902 - 1968). Kreutzberg is an important figure in German ballet and modern dance whom Richmond Barthé befriended when he performed in New York in the 1930s. Barthé made several sculptures of the expressive dancer in busts and figures. Barthé himself studied Martha Graham's dance techniques in an effort to understand the movement and form of dancing figures.

A plaster cast of this head was exhibited and illustrated in the 1974 Anacostia Museum catalogue The Barnett-Aden Collection. Other similar bronze casts of this head are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, the David C. Driskell Collection, the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the Kinsey Collection of African American Art and History. Kinard p. 40; Auzenne, p. 42.