Alicja Kwade, Goldelse, Detail, 2021
© Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery. Photo credit: Photo by Roman März.
Alicja Kwade, Golden Else, 2021
© Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery. Photo credit: Photo by Roman März
Portrait of Alicja Kwade
© Doro Zinn
PreviousNext
Alicja Kwade donates sculpture “Goldelse” for the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie
13.08.2024
New National Gallery
As of August 13, 2024, Alicja Kwade’s sculpture Golden Else (2021) can be seen in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie. The 160 kg, gold-plated bronze figure makes formal and content-related references to the statue of the goddess of victory Victoria, which stands on the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten. The Berliners have Golden Elsesomething like “Golden Lizzy”.
Alicja Kwade (born 1979) used phototrigonometric scanning technology and a 3D model to create the Golden Else (2021) Sculpture depicting Friedrich Drake’s Victoria Figure on the Berlin Victory Column (1864–1873). In her work, Kwade removed the traditional symbols of power from the original statue – the wings, the laurel wreath in the raised right hand, the staff with the Iron Cross in the left hand and the eagle helmet. Kwade’s Victoria dispenses with her military equipment and martial gestures and, unlike the original, has lowered her arms. While Kwade brought her back down to earth, he also adjusted the size of the goddess of victory to human proportions. The statue, which now measures 164 cm, corresponds exactly to the artist’s height.
The artistic reinterpretation of the statue alludes to the eventful history of the Golden ElseCreated as a symbol of Prussia’s victories, the figure was repurposed during the Nazi era and brought to its current location at the Grosser Stern roundabout in the Tiergarten, where it became a symbol of freedom for Berlin’s techno and queer scene at the Love Parades in the 1990s.
Sculpture Garden of the New National Gallery
Together with daphne (1918) by Renée Sintenis and Venus Black (1958) by Marianna Nuñez del Prado, Golden Else by Alicja Kwade is the third sculpture by a female artist to be installed in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie.
Sound in the Garden to be unveiled on August 22, 2024
As part of Sound in the Garden, the sculpture will be officially unveiled in the sculpture garden on Thursday, August 22, 2024, with live music from ROSIN and Stabat Kater as well as DJ sets from lariferrarie & Rico Sperl. The artist will be present.
Please register: Admission is free, but registration via the pretix website is required.
The Golden Else is now permanently on display in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie thanks to this generous donation from the Berlin artist Alicja Kwade and the Pace Gallery.
