'3 eingezogene Kugeln', 1969, metal, cadmium protected, on stone plinth, dimensions 28.2 cm x 75 cm x 44.7 cm, stone plinth slightly bumped, receipt of purchase attached, Provenance: Galerie Thilo Liemersdorf, Essen 1972, private collection Essen, exhibitions: 30.11.1983 - 8.1.1984, ''Ernst Hermanns - Arbeiten von 1960 bis 1983''; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Literature: Wvz. 153, mistake in the catalogue raisonné, ''Ernst Hermanns'', Städtisches Museum Leverkusen, Schloss Morsbroich last page; Catalogue ''Ernst Hermanns-Plastiken 1960-1983'', p. 48 & 75.
''When several individual forms relate to each other, a spatial tension is created from body to body. Space is included as a connecting part of the sculpture and acquires a new meaning.'' (Ernst Hermanns cit., in: Das Kunstwerk. Zeitschrift für moderne Kunst 15 (1961/62), p. 25.)
The three stainless steel spheres, two of which are recognizable as joined calottes. They are firmly mounted on a slate plate and placed in a correlation of room and shape. Their polished surfaces have a brushed texture. The portable sculpture perfectly reflects the artistic concerns of the sculptor Ernst Hermanns. He is not only outstanding for contemporary art in North Rhine-Westphalia, but has an international standing as a spatial and installation artist. In 2014, the Museum DKM in Duisburg, which owns a large Hermanns collection and is dedicated to providing a comprehensive overview of the artist's work, held a major exhibition in which his work was shown in connection to other comparable representatives of international sculpture such as Norbert Kricke, Günter Fruhtrunk, and Donald Judd. Hermanns worked with metal objects in the form of asymmetric cubes, spheres and steel-made from polished stainless steel that was brushed to remove its shine. The ''Spatial Constellations,'' as he called them, exist as installations and as portable artworks, which work well on both: a large and small scale. His central concern revolved around the idea of addressing the space between several corresponding objects as a constitutive part of the artwork. In his view, form and space are of equal value; space becomes a necessary part of sculpture. Whereas in the 1950s he was still working with varied, pierced forms with rough, broken surfaces, from 1960 onwards his formal repertoire was gradually simplified, before he finally arrived at the limited repertoire of closed cylindrical and square rods, round and rectangular discs and the repeating sphere motifs that were to characterise his works from that point onwards. Hermanns studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Aachen and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. After the war, he founded the ''Junger Westen'' group in Recklinghausen in 1948 together with other artists including Emil Schumacher and Heinrich Siepmann. His works can be found in the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Munich, the Museum Am Abteiberg Mönchengladbach and other collections. The largest collection of works is held by the Museum DKM in Duisburg, which also presents the artist's estate.
