What do the three sculptures on this pedestal have in common? They are all fragments, consciously or not. While the two outer objects are remnants of Roman antiquity, the shape of the torso was deliberately chosen by the Bonn sculptor Ingeborg von Rath for her terracotta figure in the 1920s. Born in Bonn in 1902, von Rath grew up in an upper middle-class family where her artistic talent was recognised at an early age. After training as a craftswoman and studying sculpture at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Cologne, she worked as a freelance artist in Bonn from 1925, where she opened her own studio and ran an art school. In addition to her work as a sculptor, she specialised in grave ornaments, portraits and medals, accepting official commissions for personalities such as Konrad Adenauer and teaching as a lecturer at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn in post-war Germany.
The three objects also have in common that they come from the collection of Eduard von der Heydt, who donated them to the Wuppertal Museum. Ancient Roman or Ancient Greek objects were only a small part of von der Heydt's collection, and he collected them less specifically.
At the end of the exhibition, the three objects form a link between old and new, between antiquity and modernity. On the one hand, they show the formal relationships, and on the other, the different materials - marble, sandstone and terracotta - can be experienced and compared in their individual effects.
