Ernesto de Fiori

• Jüngling, 1911 (Kunsthalle Mannheim) • Ursula, 1912 (whereabouts unknown, formerly Collection Flechtheim) • Jüngling (Nijinski), 1914 (private collection) • Badende, 1917 (Berlinische Galerie) • Mann, 1918 (Hamburger Kunsthalle) • Kniende, 1922 (Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig) • Selbstportrait, 1926 (Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum, Duisburg) • Engländerin, 1924 (Georg-Kolbe-Museum, Berlin) • Bildnis Jack Dempsey, 1925 (Austrian National Gallery, Vienna) • Junge Frau, around 1928 (Landesmuseum Oldenburg) • Der Boxer Max Schmeling, 1928 (National Gallery Berlin) • Bildnis Reichspräsident Hindenburg, 1928 (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) • Bildnis Marlene Dietrich, 1931 (National Gallery Berlin) • Selbstbildnis, 1933 (Berlinische Galerie) • Selbstbildnis, 1945 (São Paulo Museum of Art)

• Illustration — "Jüngling (Nijinski)", 1914 • Illustration — Grosser Juengling I, 1926. National Museum in Szczecin Throughout his life, Ernesto de Fiori, who considered himself a cosmopolitan European and was self-taught as a sculptor, denied any affiliations to groups, schools and -isms. On the one hand, as a figurative sculptor, he was very keen not to be taken for a traditionalist, on the other hand he polemicized against Dadaism and abstract painting and rejected Expressionism. However, French influences seem particularly strong in the artist’s oeuvre. Alfred Kuhn, a German art historian who analyzed De Fiori’s development as early as 1922, considered Aristide Maillol the most impactful influence on the artist. According to Kuhn, de Fiori was in search of "the great form", a strictly tectonic sculptural form ideally represented by Maillol’s work of the time. In Paris, during his formative years 1911 to 1914, de Fiori studied Maillol, Despiau and Rodin as well as younger contemporaries like Brancusi. Rodin’s impressionist treatment of surfaces may have left marks in the „haptic“ nature of de Fiori’s mature work of the 1920s and 30s: Working in clay, de Fiori modeled quickly using only his fingers, commissioned portraits were sometimes finished and ready to cast in a couple of hours. This dual orientation of the sculptor – a tectonic approach on the one hand, and a more spontaneous "haptic" approach on the other hand – is also reflected in the choice of materials in which de Fiori had his works cast: while he preferred bronze to cast full-figure works, the much less filigree busts and heads were for the most part cast in stucco with its completely different character in terms of materiality. According to German sculptor and art historian Waldemar Grzimek, de Fiori's sculptural oeuvre is also rooted in the German tradition represented by Adolf von Hildebrand. However, Grzimek also acknowledges that the artistic maturation of the self-taught painter-sculptor essentially took place during his Paris years 1911 to 1914. De Fiori himself self-consciously denied German influences in his sculpture: "On the contrary, the German school was influenced by me and artists like Lehmbruck, Kolbe and Sintenis." Two of the three artists mentioned here had been living in Paris before the war broke out in 1914. Indeed, de Fiori’s early works show a stylistic relationship with the work of Georg Kolbe, an elder by a few years, however, the imparting of practical knowledge through long-time studio colleague and artistic companion Hermann Haller, whom de Fiori closely associated with in Paris and later in Zürich and in Berlin, has to be considered more impactful. Characteristically, Haller, just like de Fiori, had initially wanted to become a painter and was an autodidact as a sculptor. In the Italian reception of de Fiori's art, questions of artistic temperament, of origin and affiliation, in particular the question of the oeuvre’s "italianitá", also played an important role. In the mid 1920s, the artist had cautiously approached the Novecento Italiano and even participated in the group’s first exhibition in 1926, but subsequently rejected all attempts of appropriation, on one occasion notably at the instigation of his Berlin mentor Alfred Flechtheim. If Italian influences were decisive for de Fiori's development, they seem difficult to verify, since the artist never stayed long in Italy in his adult life.

• Beatrice Vierneisel: Ernesto de Fiori. Das plastische Werk 1911-1936.. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-496-01091-6 (Catalogue Raisonnée of de Fiori's oeuvre as a sculptor, text in German language) • Pietro Maria Bardi: Ernesto de Fiori. Ulrico Hoepli editore, Milano 1950 (Catalogue of a retrospective, text in Italian language) • Ernesto de Fiori. Uma Retrospectiva: pintura, desenho e escultura. Curadoria Mayra Laudanna. Sao Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado 1997 (Exhibition catalogue in Portuguese language) • Waldemar Grzimek: Deutsche Bildhauer des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Leben, Schulen, Wirkungen. R.-Löwit-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1969. (German language publication on 20th century sculpture in Germany, chapter on de Fiori pp. 135–142) • Alfred Kuhn: Die neuere Plastik. Von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart. Delphin-Verlag, München 1922. (German language publication on 19th and 20th century sculpture in Europe, chapter on Maillol and de Fiori pp. 89–105)