Karl Röhrig

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Karl Röhrig (born February 27, 1886 in Eisfeld an der Werra , † August 11, 1972 in Munich ) was a German porcelain designer , medalist and sculptor .

Career

Bronze sculpture Otto Ludwig (1934)

Röhrig was born the son of a white tanner and a gardener. He trained as a modeller in an Eisfeld porcelain factory . He then received training at the Ducal Drawing and Modeling School at the same location . There he met the porcelain modeler and sculptor August Göhring (* 1891 in Eisfeld; † 1965 in Munich), with whom he then attended the industrial school in Sonneberg . In 1910 they parted ways. Göhring created monumental sculptures for the world exhibition in Brussels with the director of the Sonneberg Industrial School, Professor Reinhard Möller , Röhrig moved to Dresden to “finally see good porcelain” and studied there at the Royal Saxon School of Applied Arts , where he looked at Otto Dix and George Grosz met. In 1911 he moved to Munich, where he attended the Royal School of Applied Arts and enrolled in Erwin Kurz's sculpture class on October 31, 1913 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts . In addition, he made forms of animal motifs for the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin . At the same time, his Eisfeld friend August Göhring began studying at the Munich School of Applied Arts and enrolled at the academy on October 30, 1918.

After the war

From 1915 to 1918 Röhrig was a soldier in the First World War . Like numerous artists of his generation, including Grosz and Dix, the experiences of war led to a radical, anti-militarist and socialist stance, which was reflected in two works that were now emerging in a symbolically expressive way. The war medal shows a colossus over a group of depressed people, on the medal Militarism - 1918 , three male geniuses slay an armored giant. Further socially critical, expressive work followed. From 1922 he continued his studies at the academy with Hermann Hahn , which it finished in 1926.

From the mid-1920s, Roehrig faces the Verismo "not quite the sharpness Dix 'reached [...] which, however, with him [...]" to, it emerged his character groups aged man , St. Sebastian and 1928 a large-scale masterpiece Standing man . In addition to his own socially critical, sculptural work, he developed figures and vessels for various porcelain factories, including Rosenthal and the Schwarzburger Werkstätten . In the early 1930s tried Roehrig, after the fire of the Munich Glass Palace to collect her exhibition opportunity now deprived group of "jury-free" artist, as evidenced by the seizure of power smashed the Nazis 1,933th In 1943 Röhrig was banned from working, while animal figures from his colleague Göhring were shown at the National Socialist Great German Art Exhibition in 1942 and 1943 . From 1944 to 1945, 58-year-old Röhrig was drafted into military service.

After 1945

Röhrig's studio and apartment were destroyed in a bomb attack. At Christmas 1945 the artist returned to Munich after being a prisoner of war. Röhrig, who had created his most important works between 1928 and 1945, was no longer able to gain a foothold in the art scene in post-war Germany, which was characterized by abstract art, with his socially critical, representational wooden sculptures. In 1953 he took part in an exhibition organized by the Munich Association of Visual Artists . In 1958 he received the only major public contract after the war from the German Trade Union Federation : two mighty stone reliefs, Workers of the Spirit and Workers of the Hand, depicting working people on the main portal of the Munich trade union building.

The New Munich gallery of Richard Hiepe dedicated to him in 1972 an exhibition "sculpture and sketches from 1920 to the Present" , the same year Röhrig received the Schwabing Art Prize . In 1982 the only museum exhibition to date took place in the Munich City Museum . In 1986 the art collector Joseph Hierling, who had collected twenty-five Röhrig sculptures in the course of time, organized an exhibition with works by the artist in the pavilion of the Botanical Garden in Munich. In 2011 the Kunsthalle Schweinfurt presented the exhibition “Little People - Karl Röhrig (1886–1972) and the Avant-Garde of Sculpture in Germany from Barlach to Voll” , which was then shown in 2012 in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal . Both exhibitions were also based on the Hierling Collection.

literature

  • Karl-Heinz Weppert (ed.), Gerhard Finckh (text): Small people: Karl Röhrig (1886–1972) and the avant-garde of sculpture in Germany from Barlach to Voll . Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, Von-der-Heydt-Museum Wuppertal, 2011, ISBN 978-3-936042-63-4 .
  • Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker and others: General Lexicon of Visual Artists from Antiquity to the Present , Volume 28, Seemann, Leipzig, 1950.
  • Irene von Treskow: The Art Nouveau porcelains of KPM , Prestel, Munich, 1971, p. 261.
  • Richard Hiepe: The sculptor Karl Röhrig and the beginnings of proletarian-realistic sculpture in Germany . Edited by the Neue Münchner Galerie, 1972.
  • Gerhard Finckh: Karl Röhrig - a socially critical outsider of the Munich sculptors . In: Christoph Stölzl (ed.): The Twenties in Munich, Volume 8 of Writings of the Münchner Stadtmuseum, 1979, p. 163 ff.
  • Christine Hoffmeister, Christian Suckow: Revolution and Realism: Revolutionary Art in Germany 1917 to 1933 , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1978, p. 74.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Schwarz (ed.), Richard Hiepe: Resistance instead of adjustment: German art in the resistance against fascism , Badischer Kunstverein, Elefanten Press, 1980, p. 274
  2. ^ Register book of the academy in Munich
  3. ↑ http://matrikel.adbk.de/05older/mb_1884-1920/jahr_1918/matrikel-05684?searchterm=Göhring Matrikel
  4. ↑ Christoph Stölzl : The Twenties in Munich, Volume 8 of writings of the Münchner Stadtmuseum, 1979
  5. ↑ In the Munich Glass Palace, a large jury-free exhibition traditionally took place every year, the participants of which were loosely connected.
personal data
SURNAME Röhrig, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German porcelain designer, medalist and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Ice field on the Werra
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1972
Place of death Munich