(Bleckede/Elbe 1945–2007 Düsseldorf)
Elbquelle, 1999, iron casting, rust patina, one example of 2 realized iron casts, 176 x 68 x 70 cm, edited by Kunstgießerei Harms, Oldenburg

Harms foundry confirmed the cast verbally.

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia, directly from the artist.

Literature:
Joseph Kiblitsky (ed.), Jörg Immendorff, Allen Dingen ist der Wechsel eigen, Formia 2001, p. 157 (Elbquelle II, due to the illustration the sculpture seems to be red)

For his monumental sculpture „Elbquelle“, which was erected in 1999 in the Saxon industrial town of Riesa, Jörg Immendorff allowed himself to be inspired by the symbolism of late Romanticism. The sessile oaks of Caspar David Friedrich, as a symbol of the power of nature and of the inexhaustible energy of art, served as inspiration for Immendorff. In the knotted limbs of the bare tree are found the painter’s palette and mahlstick, beneath it a boulder and the symbolic source of the River Elbe in the form of rectangular blocks of stone at the foot of the tree. Following his motto „disguised by tree and bark, the painter‘s brush becomes a spade,“ Jörg Immendorff leans the spade, as symbol of his brush, against the gnarled bark of the tree. Immendorff deals with the theme of the source of the River Elbe and the motif of the sessile oak with mahlstick, artist’s palette and spade=brush in a number of his works.
The cast iron sculpture, which is devoted less to the themes of art and politics and instead is intended to symbolise once again the power and inexhaustible energy of nature, was conceived for an intersection in Riesa; it is 25 meters tall and weighs approximately 240 tons. Alongside the monumental civic sculpture, Immendorff projected an edition of six smaller works which differ from the monumental work only in their height of 180 cm. Only three of the sculptures „Elbquelle II“ were cast in the Harms Foundry in Oldenburg.

„Disguised by tree and bark, the painter’s brush becomes a spade. (...)
The scale of the work is adequate to the scale of the problem, to live at a time which strikes up the dirge for culture and painting.“

Immendorff on the sculpture „Elbquelle“ in Riesa, 1999.