The depiction of Eve in the Cerruti Collection, probably bought by the collector before 1983, dates from 1920 and a stylistic and thematic phase in which the sculptor was still under the influence of Symbolism.

Richard Klein, a painter, sculptor and medal maker active in Germany during the interwar period, was the director of the School of Applied Arts in Munich. He is known for having been one of the artists most favoured by Adolf Hitler, of whom he also produced a portrait bust, and by the Nazi party, especially as the maker of medals to commemorate the regime’s most important events. Characterised by an increasingly smooth and linear style in which naturalism and classicism blend in a deeply rhetorical whole, Klein is the epitome of the culture of the Third Reich, the model held up as a banner against the “degenerate art” loathed by Nazi Germany and hence as an example of what modern art should have meant in that context.¹ 

The depiction of Eve in the Cerruti Collection, probably bought by the collector before 1983, dates from 1920 and a stylistic and thematic phase in which the sculptor was still under the influence of Symbolism. The few known examples of Klein’s work, which is now hard to track down, suggest a derivation from the smoothly polished sculptures of Franz von Stuck (his master) and from the Munich Secession in general with the further simplification of forms and the adoption of some elements of Art Deco. The small sculpture presents the first woman as a demure Venus, solid and pure in form, covering her genitals with the right hand and holding an apple in the left. The turn of the head to the right, as though to escape eye contact, the concealment of the pudenda and the apple held close to the shoulder are all elements suggesting the moment of shame after the act of disobedience to God’s will leading to loss of the original state of immortality in the Garden of Eden. The clearly defined and outlined eyes, though blind, can also be seen as a reference to the moment when “the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked” (Genesis, 3:7). Stylistically, the simplified, linear forms and the rhythm of the hair betray primitivist echoes in line with the culture of the period, attesting to a cautiously experimental approach, which was later definitively abandoned in favour of the classicism and monumentality of the years to come. 

Matteo Piccioni 

¹ Michaud 2004, pp. 92-93.