The Ice Skating Princess

Carl Milles, Herman Bergman Fud

Bronze with green patination. Signed Carl Milles. Numbered, no. 1. Dated 1952. Foundry mark Herman Bergman Fud. LITERATURE Henrik Cornell, "Carl Milles, his work", 1963, the motif included in the catalogue raisonné p. 258 under the year 1949. Erik Näslund, "Carl Milles - a biography", 1991, the motif included in the catalogue raisonné p. 337 under the year 1949. Carl Milles created "The Ice Skating Princess" in 1949 as a lively tribute to the joy of movement. He found inspiration when he saw a young girl ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Captivated by her vibrant energy, he wanted to preserve the moment in bronze. The result was a playful and dynamic sculpture where the girl's outstretched arms and swirling skirt create the feeling that she is floating in the middle of a pirouette. The work clearly differs from other works Milles produced during the same period, such as "Man and Pegasus" and "God's Hand", which are characterized by existential questions about security and man's relationship to the divine. In "The Ice Skating Princess", we instead encounter a brighter and more playful side, where the artist captures the vitality of youth in a seemingly infinite flow of movement. Despite the heavy material, the figure feels weightless – almost as if she continues to spin beyond the frozen moment of the sculpture. Milles was particularly skilled at depicting movement, something that recurs in several works from the 1940s and 1950s. A similar example is "Skating Angels" from 1948, which can be seen as an artistic parallel. There, heavenly figures appear, while "The Ice Skating Princess" is more down-to-earth in its expression. Here, the young princess becomes a symbol of freedom and joy of life, and the sculpture captures a moment where the tangible meets the dreamlike – a movement that is both concrete and poetically charged.