Professor Otto Poertzel - A rare Art Deco bronze statue, Germany circa 1930, the young woman cold-painted silver with a black painted long sleeved robe, standing on a plinth of alternating smiling and sad faces, mounted on a shaped marble base.
This is a very unusual bronze and more than likely based on an image from a well known movie of that period. Poertzel was one of the master Art Deco sculptors of the period.
Hermann Hugo Otto Poertzel (Poertzl) 1876 - 1963.
The son of a porcelain designer and decorater and born in Scheibe Germany, he served as an apprentice at the A. W. Fr. Kister porcelain factory and in 1983 began a three years course of studies at the Sonneberg Technischen Akademie für Porzellan working under Reinhard Möller. From 1900 he worked independently in Coberg and moved to Munich in 1908 starting his own workshop. He took part in many International exhibitions such as the 1904 St Louis World's Fair and the 1910 Brussels International Art Exhibition.
He is most well known for his beautiful Art Deco bronze figurines (often with carved ivory) depicting dancers, cabaret and film stars as well as fashionable young women with his bronzes being cast first by Rosenthal und Maeder and then later Preiss & Kassler in Berlin (where he shared a studio with Ferdinand Preiss).
The honorary title of Professor was bestowed on him by the German state.