Rare Munich Art Doll by Marion Kaulitz

Description:

Rare Munich Art Doll by Marion Kaulitz, c. 1908, with molded and painted composition head, closed mouth, blue intaglio eyes, light- red mohair wig, and ball-jointed composition body in the original finish, in probably original white printed cotton dress, brown pinafore, white cotton clip, undergarments, stockings, and French brown and white kid saddle shoes, ht. 20 in., (slight paint wear on nose and mouth, pleasing patina),with period maple-handled parasol and maple deck chair with striped cotton awning.
Note: Attributed to the Munich Art Doll studio of Marion Kaulitz, whose Pupper Reform in Bavaria aspired to a greater realism in dolls. Her dolls, first exhibited at the Hermann Tietz department store in Munich in 1908, were modeled on actual children, with the same realism as the character models by Kammer & Reinhardt, which perhaps they inspired. Heads were developed in plaster, and cast in hard composition. A report published in Art et Decoration in 1910 commented that, although there were only seven different heads modeled, "each one seems to have ... their very own face", the artists varying the patina, eye and hair color, coiffeur and costume on every doll. The article goes on to state that "these are true living dolls". Particular attention was paid in other contemporary reports to the costumes of the Kaulitz dolls, which were often an exact imitation of the regional costume of different German provinces, as observed by Kaulitz in the Sunday and market attire of the farming families who visited Munich. Although her studio continued creating dolls into the 1920s, she did not meet with widespread commercial success after her initial fame. Her dolls were said not to appeal to children and, as a result, there are few surviving examples known today. Marion Kaulitz' work can be viewed as a part of the German expressionist movement embodied by the artists of Die Brucke, such as Emil Nolde, whose experiments in different media aimed to bridge the gap between the artist and the public, as did Kaulitz' between the child and the toy, a 1911 article in Harper's describing her as an artist with a "deep love for childhood".
Estimate $4,000-6,000

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