Alfred Vollmar

Sundial , executed by Alfred Vollmar as a sgraffito and mosaic on the Schnetzenhausen parish church

Alfred Vollmar (born March 27, 1893 in Nagold ; † September 26, 1980 in Leutkirch im Allgäu ) was a German painter, draftsman and graphic artist.

Life

Alfred Vollmar was born as the first of twelve children on March 27, 1893 in Nagold. Since his father worked as a young administrative lawyer in various senior positions, Alfred lived with his family in Leutkirch as a child from 1897 to 1901, not knowing that he would settle here decades later.

The Vollmar family of civil servants moved to Ulm in 1901, where Alfred attended school until he graduated from high school in 1913. His talent for drawing had become evident during his school days, and so he hoped to prove himself as a freelance artist after attending the art academy.

When war broke out in 1914, he volunteered, as did two of his brothers. A few weeks later he returned from the western front, seriously wounded: partial amputation of his left arm and hearing damage, which subsequently worsened and led to deafness. It was injuries that seriously affected his fate.

However, his will to make art his purpose in life remained unbroken. After years at the academy in Stuttgart and Munich, Alfred Vollmar lived in Ulm as a freelance artist. In 1919 he was one of the founders of the Ulm Artists' Guild. Years of varied artistic activity followed, highly regarded exhibitions, larger commissioned works, public recognition and his own publications on art theory.

Since religious themes were always present in his work, and he also did not become a party member, he did not fit into the ideology of the Nazi era and after 1933 was increasingly isolated, ignored in commissions and disadvantaged in exhibitions.

After his marriage in 1942 and the increasing threat from the bombing raids on German cities, Vollmar moved to the Allgäu, to Haubach between Isny ​​and Leutkirch. So he and his work were spared when his parents' house in Ulm sank into ruins on the night of the bombing on December 17, 1944. During this time in Haubach he had contacts with Hermann Tiebert (1895–1978) in Ried near Isny, a painter of the New Objectivity.

Only the end of the war brought a new upswing for Alfred Vollmar, there were important orders for “art in architecture” in churches and chapels. The Archdiocese of Freiburg obliged him to work on the "Konradsblatt", for which he provided a weekly art review for the cover picture for 15 years. In 1949 his guide was published by “Das Münster von Ulm” (out of print today).

In 1952 he was able to move into their own house in Leutkirch with his wife and son Winfried. He also took on orders for large-format sgraffiti and frescoes on buildings, but also devoted himself to small forms, drawings and watercolors on paper.

He recovered only with difficulty from a stroke in 1966, which made working on scaffolding impossible. So it was the small formats that his daily work in the studio was about. The humble artist became increasingly silent. Alfred Vollmar died in September 1980.

plant

Boy with goats, etching, signed, 10 × 9 cm

Danube valley watercolor

Limestone rocks on the Danube watercolor

Sgraffito on the chapel of the Regina Pacis house (Queen of Peace) in Leutkirch in the Allgäu

Regina Pacis , detail

Alfred Vollmar saw his artistic role models in the great German masters such as Altdorfer, Cranach or Dürer, especially in their graphic work. He felt confirmed in this by the southern German circle of artists to which he belonged, together with friends Rudolf Cammisar (1891–1983), Josef Nicklas (1895–1974), Edmund Steppes (1873–1968) and others.

Vollmar never tired of recording the landscape and people of his experienced home between the Black Forest and Allgäu, Swabian Alb and Lake Constance with pencil or silver pen, with black or brown pen, with brush and color on paper. His special love was for old paper and endpapers from folios. If necessary, he tinted the background with watercolors to emphasize the old masterly impression of the timeless picture content.

It emerged drawings and watercolors , mostly undated:

• sensitive portraits of the people around him,
• religious image content with saints and monks,
• untouched landscapes with gnarled, living trees,
• Demonic and fairytale-like,
• Animals with shepherds on the pasture in wordless harmony, harmony between nature, animals and people. Everything, however, simplified to the essentials and not photo-realistic despite being true to nature. The estate contains hundreds of these sheets.
• With the etching needle, which forces the artist to great precision and clarity, he created many works that made him famous in Ulm in the 1920s. The catalog raisonné of the etchings alone counts over 100 works.

Large-format murals, frescoes and sgraffiti on churches, public buildings, industrial buildings ( art in architecture ) were also created as commissioned work :

• Friedrichshafen, Nikolauskirche, destroyed by bombs in 1944,
• Heggbach, monastery church of the Assumption of Mary, fresco 10 × 6.5 m
• Ulm, for the Kässbohrer company
• Spaichingen, 1954, Stations of the Cross on the Trinity Mountain
• Freudenstadt
• Tübingen
• Leutkirch, 1958, Regina Pacis at the Episcopal Student Home at the time
• Schwenningen, 1965 painting of the Ascension Church

Alfred Vollmar belongs to a group of artists whose path lay beyond the general art scene of the time. He found no access to expressionism or abstract painting. Again and again he spoke of the “beautiful line” to which he wanted to remain true. He served this image idea all his life.

Exhibitions

For the 1920s and 1930s the following are named:

• Ulm
• Stuttgart
• Munich
• Frankfurt
• Weimar
• Lübeck
• Florence
• 1932 annual show of the Ulm Artists' Guild
• 1950 Museum Ulm (A. Vollmar / J. Nicklas)
• 1964 Ochsenhausen
• 1983 Leutkirch, gallery in the Torhaus, for his 90th birthday
• 1992 Isny, Museum am Mühlturm

literature

• Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker: General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present. Volume 3/4, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1992, DNB 921388853 .
• Walter Münch: In Praise of Art: Speeches. Published by the Ravensburg district 1986, DNB 880393335 .
• Adelmann v. Adelmannsfelden, Josef Anselm: In memory of Alfred Vollmar. In: Sacred Art. Member gift of the Art Association of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart 1979–1980.
• Winfried Vollmar: Alfred Vollmar. Privately owned manuscript
• Eveline Roth: Alfred Vollmar - a representative of the lost generation. Appreciation for the 100th birthday. In: Schwäbische Zeitung. Leutkirch. March 27, 1993.

Web links

Commons : Alfred Vollmar  - Collection of Images

• German digital library deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de
• State Archive Baden-Württemberg, Main State Archive Stuttgart Correspondence VZ, Q 2/40 Bü 202
• Heidelberg historical holdings - digital, Hofmann Franz: Alfred Vollmar as a graphic artist. ub.uni-heidelberg.de
• Alfred Vollmar-ZVAB, The Minster of Ulm, Verlag Badenia, zvab.com
• Andreas Zoller: The landscape painter Edmund Steppes (1873–1968) and his vision of a “German painting”. PhD thesis . Braunschweig 1999. opus.hbk-bs.de
• Collector's stamp / signature Alfred Vollmar kunst-und-kultur.de