Renée Sintenis

The Special exhibition on the life and work of Berlin based artist Renée Sintenis comemorating her 125th anniversairy can still be seen at the Georg Kolbe Museum till the end of March.

The english Wikipedia article on Sintenis unfortunately is a stub, so here's the text from the Kolbe Museum:


"Renée Sintenis (1888–1965) was one of the major sculptors of the first half of the 20th century. Her best-known work is the Berlinale Bear, the highly symbolic icon awarded annually at the International Film Festival. The Georg Kolbe Museum is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective exhibition encompassing over 100 sculptures to the Berlin artist on the occasion of her 125th birthday: animal figures cast in bronze and silver, striking depictions of athletes and expressive portraits, some of which portray such close friends as the writer and cabaret artist Joachim Ringelnatz who composed a series of touching tongue-in-cheek poems for Sintenis. A number of historical photographs additionally convey a vivid picture of the emancipated protagonist from Berlin’s pre-war art world who was the epitome of the frequently invoked feminist ideal of the “New Woman.” The exhibited works lent largely by the Knauf Collection, Berlin, are supplemented by pieces from the holdings of the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Georg Kolbe Museum.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive scholarly catalogue presenting the sculptural work of Renée Sintenis."

I was visiting the exhibition together with the local urban sketchers, which was a fun experience.
The Kolbe museum with it's small park, filled with Kolbe's sculptures is truly an enchanting place with a small Café in his former residential building and the museum in his atelier.

The Sintenis exhibition does not only showcase the equisite animal sculptures of Sintenis (including the "Berlinale Bear" for which she presumably is best known for internationally) but as well her selfportraits and the portraits of artist colleagues as a lot of photographies on her and her life.

 That's the famous bear, but there's much, much more to be seen.
Especially her miniatures of sportsmen, kids and horses are of an incredible dynamic:

Here is a great article on her in the ART-magazine (in German language)

This picture shows Sintenis together with Aristide Maillol, Albert Einstein and Max Liebermann in1930: