Oskar Döll
Oskar Döll (born March 1, 1886 in Suhl ; † September 20, 1914 in Fontenoy ) was a German sculptor and painter whose promising career as an artist ended tragically at the beginning of the First World War .
Life
Döll was born in southern Thuringia as the son of an engraver who trained him for this craft and sent him to the Munich School of Applied Arts in 1903 . Together with his teacher there, the sculptor Ignatius Taschner , Döll then went to Breslau, where he completed his studies at the Kgl. Graduated from arts and crafts school. After completing his one-year volunteer service in Thuringia , he followed Taschner to Berlin for a year in 1906 , but soon felt too restricted in his own artistic development there.
From 1907 to the end of 1912 he studied again, now at the Kgl. Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden as a member of Georg Wrba's master class . Döll's close circle of friends there included the painter Alexander Gerbig , who was also born in Suhl , the Dresden painter and composer Paul Oberhoff, and Paul Pils from Görlitz . For all of them, Max Pechstein , who was a few years older and who was also trained in Dresden and worked in his own studio, was the role model for a new understanding of art.
Even during his student years, Döll created a large number of handicrafts, such as designs for jewelry, medals and rifle engravings. The animal group “Girl with a falcon on a deer” (1908) as part of the Berlin “ Crown Prince Silver” documented his intensive collaboration in Taschner's projects . Participation in competitions resulted in orders for seals, commemorative coins and other items, mostly mediated by his uncle and advisor Otto Keilpart, who lives in Dresden. Monumental figures created as facade decorations (especially in Dresden and in the Saxon area) cost Döll a lot of energy and delayed the continuation of his own projects.
In 1911/12, Döll and Gerbig went on an eight-week study trip to France , to the "Land of Landscape Painters", to the Gothic cathedrals and to the Louvre , where the young Thuringian artists studied the masterpieces of European art with enthusiasm and critical appreciation. The “tremendous feeling for nature” of Paul Cézanne's painting and the abolition of traditional national forms in the sculptures by Auguste Rodin made a particularly lasting impression on Döll.
Above all, however, the outstanding role model Rodin shaped Oskar Döll's years of struggle for the plastic mastery of naked male bodies, in a traditional heroic appearance, but also lifelike in a fighting group of three or while mountain climbing . He stayed on the trail of the secrets of the veracity of design in his work projects. The figure of a sack carrier, for example, with a local reference to the Thuringian homeland, had already occupied Döll in his early works - he had tried it out “undressed” and “dressed”, in hand drawings and three-dimensional variations. With the bronze figure of a naked ancient warrior, Döll won a competition in 1912 for a monument to the fallen soldiers of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 for the market fountain in Dippoldiswalde .
After extensive sculptural work for the new Dresden theater , Döll was able to afford a two-week trip to Italy to visit the art treasures and monuments of Florence , Rome and Naples in autumn 1913 . On October 4, 1913, he wrote in his diary: "The greatest experience for the sculptor: Michelangelo's unfinished David."
Traveling to his homeland in Thuringia, hiking and hunting trips in Saxon Switzerland and Bohemia , often with painter friends from Dresden and preferably with Paul Oberhoff, gave him a break from the increasing number of design and realization works for building sculptures.
The outbreak of the First World War abruptly ended the career of the only 28-year-old sculptor, who had followed an extremely successful path in almost ten years of artistic development and was about to gain acceptance into the Berlin Secession through Max Liebermann .
On 2 August 1914 suffered Döll the convocation for military service; already on 20 September 1914, he was at a patrol killed; action at Fontenoy as a sergeant of the militia, as had been ordered, a lost regimental flag retrieve. "For Dresden's young art, his death is an irreplaceable loss ..." wrote Döll's teacher Georg Wrba and his friends in an obituary.
Exhibitions
- Memorial exhibition on the occasion of the 100th birthday, Club " Johannes R. Becher " Suhl, October 25th to November 10th 1986
- Exhibition by the Saxon State Library, Dresden 1986.
Works (selection)
- 1897: Children playing, watercolor
- 1906: Self-portrait with a cigar, oil on canvas
- 1906: self-portrait, watercolor
- 1908: Unclothed bag carrier, plaster of paris
- 1908: Clothed sack carrier, plaster
- 1908: Portrait bust Charlotte Dietze, plaster
- 1905-08: Girl with falcon on a deer, silver (collaboration)
- 1909: Standing, unclothed old man, plaster of paris
- 1910: Stamp for commemorative medal for the inauguration of the New Town Hall in Dresden
- 1912/13: Fountain with a war memorial (“Ancient Warrior”) for the market square in Dippoldiswalde, bronze
- undated: muscleman, cast
- 1910/13: “Kampf” group, bronze
- 1910/13: “Bergsteiger” group, bronze
- 1910/13: portrait bust Paul Oberhoff, bronze
- 1913: Boy with mask and three other balustrade figures above the royal driveway of the new Dresden theater, cast stone
- 1914: Portrait busts of Frau Nolden and the daughter of the Dresden City Planning Council Erlwein , plaster models for keystones of the college for girls, Dresden-Neustadt
- 1913/14: Design of the award medal from the Dresden Art Academy
literature
- Max Fischer, Ulli Arnold: Oskar Döll in memory. A contribution to Dresden sculpture before 1914. In: Yearbook of the Dresden State Art Collections . 1978/79.
- Wolfgang Knop: life and work, views and maxims of Oskar Döll. in the catalog for the memorial exhibition in Suhl, 1986, with catalog raisonné.
- Gerd Manig: Series of articles on Oskar Döll in Suhler Wochenblatt, 2006.
Web links
- Special catalog on the Oskar Döll estate , Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library , accessed on April 4, 2015
Individual evidence
- ^ Oskar Döll. Artist. German Society for Medal Art, accessed on November 6, 2015 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Doll, Oskar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor and painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 1, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Suhl |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 20, 1914 |
| Place of death | Fontenoy (Aisne) |