Kolbe was one of the most influential and successful German sculptors of the 20^th Century and one of the main exponents of the idealistic female nude. Kolbe began his career studying painting under Max Klinger in Munich, before moving to Rome in 1898 where, under the influence of Louis Tuaillon, he began to sculpt. On his return to Germany in 1901, he lived first in Leipzig and then moved to Berlin in 1904, abandoning painting completely. Kolbe was quickly accepted into the cities artistic society, being admitted to the Berlin Secession and attracting the support of Paul Cassirer, the most influential dealer of his time. In 1912 his artistic breakthrough came with his masterpiece Die Tänzerin (The Dancer), which was exhibited at the 1912 Berlin Secession and acquired later that year for the Nationalgalerie. Engrossed in the act of dancing, with her eyes closed and arms raised, the figure came to symbolise the desire for freedom from the shackles of the Wilhelminian Period.

After the war Kolbe became a member of the Preußische Akademie der Künste (Prussian Academy of Arts) and chairman of the Freie Secession (Free Secession), which at the time was a significant artist community. In this official position he promoted new artistic endeavours, befriending Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein, whose work he also collected. After a trip to Egypt in 1913 his work changed from a delicate and sensitive aesthetic to a more compact and structured way of working, later creating his figures in more geometric terms, in a reaction to the Expressionist movement.

Kolbe strived for the autonomous, modern presentation of the human form. By choosing the female nude, he could simultaneously distance himself from the present era, instead focusing on the eternal qualities of the figure, while also reflecting on the spirit of the time and its ideals. Capriccio, 1921, executed in a striking red brown patina, illustrates this juxtaposition in Kolbe’s work, with its classical features and idealised form paired with a daringly modern stance, with the figure sitting with her legs wide apart. There is a great sense of dynamism to the figure, as she leans back on her right hand, her body taught with her legs raised, ready to spring into action at any moment.

Kolbe’s bronzes of the twenties found a large resonance in the Weimer Republic and were shown in multiple single and group exhibitions in Germany, Europe and the USA and were incorporated into a number of both private and public collections. The rise of the artist’s reputation can be seen in the numerous portraits he was commissioned in the second half of the 1920s and in the number of public commissions at the time, such as the helical Rathenaubrunnen in Berlin (consecrated 1930, destroyed in 1934, and reconstructed in 1987). His success was also reflected in the construction of his large studiohouse in Berlin-Westend in 1928, which in 1940 opened as a museum dedicated to his legacy.