Collection Sculpture

The Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen has been collecting sculptural works since the 1950s, with its key focus on figurative sculpture from the first half of the twentieth century. This concentration on a reduced number of works encourages viewers to consider them comparatively in terms of the central themes, formal conceptions and motifs of this period. With the purchase in 1955 of the “Jewish Memorial”, an extraordinary major work by Otto Pankok consisting of ten bronze figures became part of the Gelsenkirchen collection at an early point. Pankok created the work in the 1930s as an admonishing symbol in the face of Nazi crimes against the Jewish community. Another early acquisition by the museum were three bronzes by the Berlin sculptor Renée Sintenis, whose animal sculptures focus on the element of movement and essential nature of her depicted animal figures. Sintenis’s works stand in stark contrast to the time-transcending human figures of the artist Georg Kolbe, whose work is represented in Gelsenkirchen too. In “Monument to Balzac”, Auguste Rodin’s commemoration of the French poet from the late nineteenth century, the statue’s animated form and the uninhibited treatment of the its surface are an expression of the writer’s intellectual energy. In addition, further highlights of the museum’s sculpture collection include works by Ernst Barlach and Gerhard Marcks, as well as a self-portrait by Käthe Kollwitz.