Gustav H. Wolff

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Gustav Heinrich Wolff: Europe . Woodcut, 1923
Gustav Heinrich Wolff: Fountain figure Narcissus , 1928/1929, Sculpture Garden of the Städel , Frankfurt am Main

Gustav Heinrich Wolff (born May 24, 1886 in Barmen ; † March 22, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German sculptor , painter , graphic artist and art writer.

life and work

From 1900 to 1905 Wolff lived in Rome, where he worked in Arthur Volkmann's sculpture workshop. From 1906 Wolff went on study trips to Russia and the Balkans. From 1908 he began to devote himself to painting, now in Paris. In 1914 he went on study trips to Spain and North Africa again, but the outbreak of the First World War interrupted his further travel plans. Gustav H. Wolff was interned as a prisoner of war in Granville near Cherbourg in France from 1916 to 1918 .

After the war Wolff worked as a sculptor in Berlin. In Berlin he had a friendship with the writer Gottfried Benn . In 1919 he experienced the political upheavals there and was also committed to revolutionary changes. He tried, above all with his sculptural work, to inspire larger groups of the population and the working class for art.

In 1925 and 1926 Wolff created portal figures for a power station in Halle (Saale) and a “Caritas” statue intended for the institution for the deaf and dumb in Erfurt . This statue survived the iconoclasm of fascism in Germany because students of the institution secretly buried it there on the premises, the ones in Halle are in the courtyard of the Moritzburg .

Gustav Heinrich Wolff: charcoal drawing 1932–1934

He later made further trips to France, Spain, Morocco, Romania and in 1931 to London , where he visited Henry Moore . In 1931 he was appointed head of the sculpture class at the Leningrad State Academy of Art , but in 1932 he returned to Berlin disappointed. He died there on March 22, 1934. His final resting place is in the Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof Stahnsdorf .

Afterlife

In 1937, seventeen figures were removed from the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry as " degenerate art " and one from the Folkwang Museum in Essen . In 1938 three of his works were shown at the Berlin exhibition “Degenerate Art”.

After the war the art of Gustav H. Wolff found recognition. His works were exhibited at documenta 1 in Kassel in 1955 , among others .

In 2010 various sculptures were discovered in the rubble of the Second World War in the cellar of the house at Königstrasse 50 in the old town of Cölln ( Berlin-Mitte ), which had been filled in up until then, during preparatory work for the construction of the new underground line 5 ( Berlin sculpture find ). These were obviously hidden in this house after the exhibition “ Degenerate Art ” in 1938. One of the portraits is a standing robe figure by Gustav H. Wolff from 1925.

After the almost complete loss due to the seizure actions during the Nazi era, a larger coherent collection of works by Gustav Heinrich Wolff is still in public ownership in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg . The director at the time, Max Sauerlandt (1880–1934), who was on friendly terms with him, bought sculptures and prints from the artist, who was in financial need. Through later targeted purchases and donations, the inventory was able to grow back to a few hundred works (sculptures, prints, drawings, sketchbooks). In 1957 the first comprehensive exhibition of sculptural works after Wolff's death was shown there.

literature

Web links

Commons : Gustav Heinrich Wolff  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Two figures , in: Halle im Bild, accessed on December 26, 2015.
  2. ^ Gallery of found sculptures ( Memento from October 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Museum of Arts and Crafts - results / titledata. Retrieved July 9, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Gustav H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolff, Gustav Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor, painter and art writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen , Germany
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1934
Place of death Berlin , Germany