Christian Rohlfs | |
|---|---|
 Christian Rohlfs, self-portrait (1918) | |
| Born | Christian Rohlfs 22 November 1849 |
| Died | 8 January 1938 |
| Nationality | German |
Christian Rohlfs (November 22, 1849 - January 8, 1938) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the important representatives of German expressionism.
He was born in Groß Niendorf, Kreis Segeberg in Prussia. He took up painting as a teenager while convalescing from an infection [1] that was eventually to lead to the amputation of a leg in 1874. [2] He began his formal artistic education in Berlin, [2] before transferring, in 1870, to the Weimar Academy. [1]
In 1901 Rohlfs left Weimar for Hagen, where through the architect Henri van der Velde got to know the art collector Karl Ernst Osthaus who offered him a studio in an estate which would become the Museum Folkwang. [3] Rohlfs was the first artist to begin to work there. [3] Meetings with Edvard Munch and Emil Nolde and the experience of seeing the works of Vincent van Gogh inspired him to move towards the expressionist style, in which he would work for the rest of his career. [1]
In 1908, at the age of 60, he made his first prints after seeing an exhibition of works by the expressionist group Die Brücke . He went on to make 185 in total, almost all woodcuts or linocuts. [1] He lived in Munich and the Tyrol in 1910–12, before returning to Hagen.[ citation needed ]. The outbreak of World War I worried Rohlfs such, that for some time he felt unable to paint. [3] In rare instances he experimented with heavily hand-coloring his prints, onto the verge of painting and sometimes well after they were made, as in his 1919 recoloring of the prior year's Der Gefangene. [4]
In May 1922 he attended the International Congress of Progressive Artists and signed the "Founding Proclamation of the Union of Progressive International Artists". [5] In 1937 the Nazis expelled him from the Prussian Academy of Arts, condemned his work as degenerate, and removed his works from public collections. [1] Seventeen of his paintings were exhibited in the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937. [3] He died in Hagen, Westfalia, on 8 January 1938. [3]
Throughout his career he working through a variety of academic, naturalist, impressionist, and Post-Impressionist styles. [6] He has often been viewed as one of the first Expressionists. [3]
After his death, the German Nazi authorities prohibited the sale of his paintings. [3] Commemorative exhibitions were organized by the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Berner Kunsthalle. [3]
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.
Emil Nolde was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of the early 20th century to explore color. He is known for his brushwork and expressive choice of colors. Golden yellows and deep reds appear frequently in his work, giving a luminous quality to otherwise somber tones. His watercolors include vivid, brooding storm-scapes and brilliant florals.
Franz Moritz Wilhelm Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of German Expressionism. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter, a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it.
Degenerate art was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, was removed from state-owned museums and banned in Nazi Germany on the grounds that such art was an "insult to German feeling", un-German, Freemasonic, Jewish, or Communist in nature. Those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions that included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art.
August Robert Ludwig Macke was a German Expressionist painter. He was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter. He lived during a particularly active time for German art: he saw the development of the main German Expressionist movements as well as the arrival of the successive avant-garde movements which were forming in the rest of Europe. As an artist of his time, Macke knew how to integrate into his painting the elements of the avant-garde which most interested him. Like his friend Franz Marc and Otto Soltau, he was one of the young German artists who died in the First World War.
Max Liebermann was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe. In addition to his activity as an artist, he also assembled an important collection of French Impressionist works.
Ernst Heinrich Barlach was a German expressionist sculptor, medallist, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the conflict made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war. This created many conflicts during the rise of the Nazi Party, when most of his works were confiscated as degenerate art. Stylistically, his literary and artistic work would fall between the categories of twentieth-century Realism and Expressionism.
The New Objectivity was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit. As these artists—who included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter and Jeanne Mammen—rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a breakdown and was discharged. His work was branded as "degenerate" by the Nazis in 1933, and in 1937 more than 600 of his works were sold or destroyed.
In art history, secession refers to a historic break between a group of avant-garde artists and conservative European standard-bearers of academic and official art in the late 19th and early 20th century. The name was first suggested by Georg Hirth (1841–1916), the editor and publisher of the influential German art magazine Jugend (Youth), which also went on to lend its name to the Jugendstil. His word choice emphasized the tumultuous rejection of legacy art while it was being reimagined.
Adolf Ziegler was a German painter and politician. He was tasked by the Nazi Party to oversee the purging of what the Party described as "degenerate art", by most of the German modern artists. He was Hitler's favourite painter. He was born in Bremen and died in Varnhalt, today Baden-Baden.
Otto Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.
Karl Christian Ludwig Hofer or Carl Hofer was a German expressionist painter. He was director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.
Walter Gramatté was a German expressionist painter who specialized in magic realism. He worked in Berlin, Hamburg, Hiddensee and Barcelona. He often painted with a mystical view of nature. Many of his works were inspired by his experiences in the First World War and his illness.
Heinrich Brocksieper was a German photographer, experimental filmmaker and painter who was educated at the Bauhaus design school.
Will Lammert was a German sculptor. In 1959 he was posthumously awarded the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic.
Georg Muche was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher.
The Degenerate Art exhibition was an art exhibition organized by Adolf Ziegler and the Nazi Party in Munich from 19 July to 30 November 1937. The exhibition presented 650 works of art, confiscated from German museums, and was staged in counterpoint to the concurrent Great German Art Exhibition. The day before the exhibition started, Adolf Hitler delivered a speech declaring "merciless war" on cultural disintegration, attacking "chatterboxes, dilettantes and art swindlers". Degenerate art was defined as works that "insult German feeling, or destroy or confuse natural form or simply reveal an absence of adequate manual and artistic skill". One million people attended the exhibition in its first six weeks. A U.S. critic commented "there are probably plenty of people—art lovers—in Boston, who will side with Hitler in this particular purge".
Emil Bartoschek was a German painter and Bauhaus-artist.
Heinz Trökes was a German painter, printmaker and art teacher.
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