Renée Sintenis

(German, 1888–1965)

Renée Sintenis was a German sculptor known for her small sculptures of athletes and young animals. Her works showcased an interest in the poetics of movement and form, rather than anatomical perfection or detail. “My models are a perception, not an idea,” Sintenis said of her subject matter. Along with her sculptures, the artist also created etchings for book illustrations, including Sappho’s Daphnis and Chloe. Born on March 20, 1888 in Glatz, Germany (today Klodzko, Poland) she studied at the Berlin School for the Decorative and Applied Arts, despite her parent’s disapproval. In 1917, she married the painter and writer Emil Rudolf Weiss, right at the start of her burgeoning career. Sintenis was one of the few women of her time to become a professor at the Prussian Academy, an honor she was stripped of by the Nazi regime in 1934. Managing to survive through the Nazi regime and World War II bombings, she was reinstated as a teacher in 1947 at the Hoschule der Künste. The artist died after a prolonged illness on April 22, 1965 in Berlin, Germany. Today, her works are included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.