Heinrich Wolff (graphic artist)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Self-portrait by Heinrich Wolff

Heinrich Wolff (born May 18, 1875 in Nimptsch , Lower Silesia , † March 1940 in Munich ) was a German graphic artist and painter.

Life

Heinrich Wolff attended the State Academy for Arts and Crafts in Breslau from 1891 , the Academy of Arts (Berlin) from 1893 and finally the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich until 1900 . There he became a member of the Association for Original Etching and in 1901 founded the first private graphic school with the artist and inventor Ernst Neumann-Neander . In Munich he met the young painter Elisabeth Zimmermann (1876–1952), born in Poznan , who was his student here for a while. Ludwig Dettmann and Otto Erich Eichler (1871–1904), the head of the Königsberg graphic class, brought him to the Königsberg Art Academy in 1902 . Elisabeth Zimmermann went with him and married him. In Königsberg i. Pr. Wolff was from 1902 to 1935 - as - over 33 years and professor working in the engraving class and elementary class. Retired in 1936, he returned to Munich. There he died at the age of 64.

plant

Portrait of a gentleman by Franz W. Mileuten (1918), oil 33 cm × 37 cm

Wolff was a versatile graphic artist and painter. In addition to the graphics characteristic of his work, he also created paintings , woodcuts and masterful silhouettes , which he himself published in the volume Tales of the Little Scissors . His etching Kant on his desk gained particular fame in East Prussia . The only known pictures by Richard Jepsen Dethlefsen and Paul Blunk are thanks to him. Agnes Miegel said aptly :

"His work not only captured the intellectual upper class of this eastern province, in its important representatives and all who lived in it as guests - it thus painted the picture of the last firmly established civil society that still existed here."

- Agnes Miegel

Heinrich Wolff's subjects - who often signed his pictures as Heinz Wolff - were portraits of interesting people, but also nudes, landscapes and cityscapes. Many portraits of famous doctors can be found in Heinrich Wolff's life's work, which is probably one of the reasons why the artist was awarded the rank of honorary doctor (Dr. med. Hc) from the medical faculty of the Königsberg Albertina in 1932.

Wolff later abandoned the depiction of his early portraits, which had been worked through to the last detail, in favor of a more generous interpretation. He not only used the process of lithography , but also algraphy , in which aluminum plates were used instead of stone plates.

The reserved but continuous reception of progressive styles is characteristic of Heinrich Wolff's Königsberg work. In particular, clear impressionistic influences are initially evident. But the pioneering expressionist style of the early 20th century, which he must have got to know in Berlin, finds a moderate but unmistakable expression in the more generous nude graphics of his last years of work.

Heinrich Wolff had a strong and lasting influence on artistic life in East Prussia's provincial capital. Wolff's master students included Walther KJE Frahm and Gertrud Lerbs-Bernecker . In 1927 Wolff designed the East Prussian Art exhibition of the German Art Association in the Berlin City Palace . The collection of samples he created at that time is now in the art library of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and in part in the Ostdeutsche Galerie art forum in Regensburg.

Honors

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Wolff (graphic designer)  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Götz von Selle : Ostdeutsche Biographien . Holzner, Würzburg 1955 (131)
  2. ^ Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon. City and surroundings . Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-88189-441-1
  3. ↑ Wolff, Heinrich: Tales of a small pair of scissors. Sixteen shadow cuts. Königsberg Pr, Paul Aderjahn's Verlag, 1908.
  4. ↑ Kant at his desk
  5. ↑ a b Catalog: Heinrich Wolff 1875–1940. Printmaking. East German Gallery Regensburg (1984)
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist and painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Nimptsch , Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH March 1940
Place of death Munich