Small is Beautiful; The Art of Sculpture includes five works from the Collection of the Family of Harry A. Brooks. Brooks, a close friend of Henry Moore, had a long and distinguished career in the New York art world. Having served in the US Army during the Second World War, when he was awarded the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Ribbon, Brooks embarked upon his career as an art dealer, joining E. Coe Kerr Gallery in New York, before moving to Knoedler & Co., where he worked for 21 years. In 1968 Brooks joined Wildenstein & Co. as Vice President and later President, before retiring in 1990. A graduate from Princeton University, he served on the Board of Directors at the University's Art Museum, as well as at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, NY. Brooks passed away on 2 June 2000, aged 87.

Born in 1887 in Aachen, Ewald Mataré began his artistic training, studying under the painter Eugen Klinkenberg before enrolling in the Kunstakademie in Berlin in 1907. Mataré continued his fine art education becoming the master pupil of Arthur Kampf in 1912 and later artist Lovis Corinth in 1914. It was not until after the First World War in 1920 that Mataré, now in his thirties, turned towards graphic art and sculpture.

Since Mataré has become celebrated for his sculptures of animals. He is also renowned for his individual style, which is one of clarity and objectivity of form, which stood against the subjective expressionistic tendencies of the day. Mataré developed his own expression of form somewhere between the realms of sculpture and applied arts, although one can see correlations with the work of Hans Arp and in particular Constantin Brancusi's in his organic abstractions.

In 1932 Mataré was appointed to teach at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf but was denounced as a ‘degenerate’ and soon expelled as a result of Nazi propaganda. The artist’s works in public collections were also destroyed. It was not until after the war when Mataré’s career was restored and the artist was commissioned to design the doors of the Cologne Cathedral, the window in the west tower of the Aachen Münster and the doors of the Church of Peace in Hiroshima. In 1946 Mataré was reappointed to his teaching post, where he had a strong influence on artists such as Joseph Beuys, who was one of his most famous pupils. Mataré was awarded the 'Großer Kunstpreis' of the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia in 1953 and the 'Großes Verdienstkreuz' of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1958. After a number of solo exhibitions the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam organised a large retrospective exhibition, with the Kunstverein in Cologne commemorating the artist in a large exhibition a year after his death in 1965.

Matare's work encompasses the profound spirituality of his religious works to the pleasing simplicity of his animal forms, in which he explores shape and line, as can be seen to wonderful effect in the present work Mathematik-Kuh I and lots 37 and 39.

Sonja Mataré has confirmed the authenticity of this sculpture.