Gustave Michael Pillig
(Standing nude holding her breast) 1906 and Standing nude with her hands behind her), c1909/1910
Bronze Sculptures
Both inscribed "Pillig"
$17,000 the pair including GST
Condition:
Good patination, no rubbing
These two sensual
female nude bronzes are among Gustav Pillig’s finest sculptures. They were
produced prior to his emigration to Australia and show
the classical influence of his German training, beautifully demonstrating the
sophisticated artistic sensibility that he brought with him to this country. Although
he played a notable role in the Melbourne art world between the wars the
quality of these sculptures was only occasionally emulated and his work became
increasingly eccentric before being abandoned altogether.
Gustav Michael
Pillig was born on 30 September
1877 near Essen, Germany, and lived in Düsseldorf from
1883. In 1900 he studied art at the Institute of Technology in
Stockholm, from 1901 to 1903 at the Academy in Berlin, and finally from 1905 to
1907 at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. From 1905 to 1911 Pillig was a member of the renowned
Düsseldorf artist-club, Paintbox. He
produced at least five significant public memorial sculptures: the Dr. Hugo Schulze Monument in front of
the Mining School in Bochum; the memorial of the Right Hon. Lord Mayor Zweigert
on the Horst Emscher Bridge, Essen; the memorial tomb of the Kirdorf Family
Vault at Aachen; the monument of the General Director Emil Müller at Troisdorf,
near Bonn and that of the Privy Councillor H. A. Bueck.[i]
In 1910 Pillig
moved to Berlin, but returned to Dusseldorf in 1913.. While in Berlin
he met the philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) who theorized that the
current civilization was about to end. Spengler apparently influenced Pillig
who, in 1913, is said to have believed in a looming catastrophic war and it was
apparently this belief that led him to emigrate to Australia.
In
Melbourne Pillig produced art works in a variety of media, primarily sculpture and
oil paintings but also art deco glazed pottery portraits as well
as etchings. (Pillig’s 1932 exhibition
of 43 works at Everyman's Library, 832 Collins Street, Melbourne included
plaques and book-ends and a sculpture of Phar Lap). He worked on the figurative
panels for Hoyt's Regent Theatre in Melbourne and was in charge of the
designing of decoration and the figure modelling for the Hoyt's Plaza Theatre.
In 1921 Pillig
exhibited 5 sculptures at the Society of Artists in Sydney, including
‘Bacchanal’ which was highly priced at 100 guineas. In 1922 he exhibited 4
sculptures with the Society of Artists including Sorrow, and Despair. These
presumably had as their subject the suffering experienced in the First World
War. In 1932 he exhibited 3 sculptures including, Pan & Nymphe, at the Victorian Artists Society. In the same
year, in a group exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery, Pillig exhibited 20 paintings
and sculptures in various media (including a bronze of Pan, another sculpture titled Awakening
and a terracotta titled Grief). He
exhibited a bronze bust of Henry Lawson at the Bread and Cheese Club in 1940.
He held several solo exhibitions organized by the gallerist Max Herbert
Enkhardt who appears to have been Pillig’s mentor in Melbourne.
In a review of
Pillig’s work (in ‘The Star,’ 30th
October, 1933) fellow artist Clewin Harcourt wrote: ‘...He has lived in
Australia for 20 years, yet his techniques and outlook are still German.’
Pillig's pessimistic world view appears to have intensified in the Depression years when
he was working on his grandiose work titled "Symphony of Life“ .Symphony of Life
which was exhibited in 1932 at the Pan Salon, Little Collins
street, Melbourne.. It was an 18 x 10 foot diorama comprising about 350 small,
modeled figures against a painted background with about 1000 figures, topped by
an oversized painted figure of Christ..Pillig apparently wished to express the themes of Oswald
Spengler's book The Decline of the West.
When it was exhibited the work received a bemused response. In a note in the
exhibition catalogue Pillig claimed the work was ‘a pearl in an ocean of
artistic flotsam and jetsam’ but when reviewing the exhibition for The Argus (8 November, 1932) Arthur
Streeton wrote: ‘That line might prepare one to look for a very great
masterpiece. If the work had been designed and painted by Tintoretto it would
have been a masterpiece’.
Interestingly,
Pillig sent a photograph of Symphony of
Life to Oswald Spengler. He later wrote a letter to The Argus (published 31 October 1932) which refers to Spengler’s
response:
‘. . . As far as
your wish to come back to Germany is concerned I must warn you most urgently. I
know personally several artists with famous names who at present have not got
their daily bread. If there becomes a position vacant at one of the academies,
hundreds of artists with good connections have been waiting for years for such
an opportunity, because such a position alone protects them from direct starvation.
You know how it is today for an artist to sell his work, not only in Germany, but
elsewhere. Art is bought today by snobs for the sake of showing off or for
capital investment…
Pictures of very
good masters who are still alive can be bought today nearly at the price of the
frame. It would be absolutely impossible for you to make a living here, because
others who are here cannot keep themselves alive at present. Conditions may
become a little better in a few years' time, but in Germany's present position
I most sincerely warn you.’
Pillig,
embittered that Symphony of Life
had not received proper recognition, destroyed it in 1940. Despite the lack of
success with this work and its destruction it remains a striking example of a
work by an artist in Australia in the 1930s grappling ambitiously with
international political issues.
Pillig died in modest
circumstances in 1956 in Melbourne.
[i] Information from: Hans H. Hanke, ‘A Westphalian in Australia - the sculptor
Gustav Pillig’. In Monuments in Westfalen-Lippe. Westphalian
Conservation
Office. Münster Issue 2 / 1999, pp. 68-70.