Kugelspielerin, Bronze sculpture in the Blumengarten on Königsallee, Düsseldorf, Germany

The Kugelspielerin is a 1.36-metre bronze statue by Walter Schott showing a young woman throwing a ball, placed in the Blumengarten on the Königsallee in Düsseldorf. She leans forward, her right arm extended with the ball in her open hand, her left arm behind her back for balance, and her gaze fixed on the target. The figure stands barefoot on a round plinth decorated with a double meander.

Walter Schott modelled the figure from 1895, inspired by children playing marbles in Berlin; the bronze was first shown at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1897. It won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair in 1900, and a life-size cast now stands in the Blumengarten on the Königsallee in Düsseldorf. Schott's friend Reinhold Begas called it "the best figure created in the last century."

The figure throws a ball as in boccia or boules, her gaze fixed on the target, the hem of her chiton swirling in the movement. Schott modelled her after the antique "Berlin Dancer" in the Pergamon Museum, itself following Skopas' dancing maenad of around 330 BC. The clothed version became a bestseller of the international art trade, reproduced in Meissen porcelain and bronze statuettes.

The bronze stands in the Blumengarten, a flower garden along the Königsallee in central Düsseldorf, not at Graf-Adolf-Platz. The life-size cast is 1.36 metres tall on a round plinth, so it is viewed at eye level from the surrounding beds and paths. Look for the double meander (running dog) carved around the side of the plinth.

The right breast is exposed, in the manner of an Amazon, and the round plinth beneath her feet carries a double meander, the running-key pattern of Greek art. The sculptor Walter Schott modelled the figure without a commission, first as a statuette, after watching children play marbles in Berlin.