walter schulze-mittendorff 7sins

 

Death and the Seven Deadly Sins


5. The Precious Work

Surely artists develop different emotions for their artworks and there are pieces they hold especially dear.

The Metropolis Robot whose form seemed to appear from nowhere to the artist's mind, was granted but a brief existence, the duration of one year at the most. His costume is bound to go up in flames since in accordance with the screenplay he will be burnt at the stake. From the outset the artist created the work with the awareness of its early destruction, and the timely parting with this artefact is inevitable, even though it will remain unforgettable for him.

Walter Schulze-Mittendorff has a deep connection to the miniatures of the Death and the Seven Deadly Sins. His friend Hans Wertheim is so enthusiastic about this figure group that he induces Walter Schulze-Mittendorff to have the eight figures cast in bronze. He wants to present them to the public in an exhibition that is to be held at his art gallery in the Wertheim department store in Berlin on Leipziger Straße in 1928. And so, the reference design for a stage setting from the film Metropolis becomes a separate work of art.


Walter Schulze-Mittendorf describes the circumstance:


Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger

of August 1, 1928


„The existing bronzes are cast in the year 1926/27 at the behest of Hans Wertheim – on the occasion of an exhibition – held (in his art department – still in the department store then.)

(Once the eight figures were cast in bronze it was enough for Walter Schulze-Mittendorff to own just these, the molds he deemed no longer useful and so he did not keep them, either.)

An article from the Berliner Lokal Anzeiger of August 1, 1928, gives an impression of the exhibition. At the end it says: 

"Finally, a young promising sculptor W.S. Mittendorf, who aims to animate his small sculptures with a peculiar brownish painterly  patina. „Death and the Seven Deadly Sins" shows the striving for summarization and interiorization. W.G."

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