Lot of 7 drawings (sketches, pencil and watercolour) (all ±19x13 cm. and vice versa) and 2 identical etchings (both 18x12,3 cm., on blueish paper), all showing Grit Hegesa or (2x) Jaap Kool, framed together in 2 elongated frames, verso of one of the frames w. mounted leaf w. pencil sketch and ms. annots. by Bieling. "(...) [Grit Hegesa's] debut concert occurred in Berlin in 1917, at which time she apparently associated with expressionist artists affiliated with the Secession ("Exp. im Tanz"). In 1917-1919 she was active in Holland, giving concerts in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam, where she associated with a circle of modern artists, mostly expressionists, calling itself De Branding. At this time she worked with the Dutch composer Jaap Kool (...). Hegesa was unique in exclusively using music composed by a modern composer for her dances. Educated in Paris, Kool contended that dance could not seriously develop a modern identity as long as one danced to old pieces of classical music, even those written for dance. Music for dance, he argued, emphasized rhythm at the expense of harmony, which Western classical music did not but which jazz, some forms of popular music, and exotic music from the Orient did (...). Old classical music lacked a modern sense of rhythm, by which Kool meant not only a complex, dominating sense of pulse but also strange sounds. He therefore employed in his music for Hegesa drums, bells, and gongs from his collection of Javanese gamelan instruments and different kinds of glass-timbred instruments. (...) In 1919, Kool wrote an article about Hegesa for the Dutch art journal Wendingen (...) in which he described her art as "visible music" and "pathbreaking in expressive possibilities" of the body, especially the arms, because of her excavation of archaic, erotic modes of bodily movement." (K. TOEPFER, Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935. Berkeley, 1997, p.167). The lot comprises an etched portrait of Grit Hegesa (2 copies, one handcoloured, both signed "Bieling" in pencil, 1x "Grit Hegesa" in pencil and both in the plate), a drawn portrait of Grit Hegesa (showing 2 profiles, "Kunstkring" and "Grit Hegesa '19" in pencil), 4 drawings of Grit Hegesa dancing (all titled "Grit Hegesa", 2x signed "Bieling", 1x monogrammed "B", 1x "Kunstking" and 1x "Branding"), 1 drawing (uncol.) tited "Thuis" and "Jaap Kool" (showing 2 seated women and Jaap Kool seen from the back sitting at the piano?) and a drawing w. 2 images of Jaap Kool at the piano and playing the guitar (monogrammed "B", titled "Jaap Kool" and with the Berlin addresses of both Hegesa en Kool in blank margin). Interesting lot. SEE ILLUSTRATION PLATE VI.
