Rolf Nida-Rümelin

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Rolf Nida-Rümelin (born June 16, 1910 in Starnberg , † October 26, 1996 in Munich ) was a German sculptor and medalist and son of the sculptor Wilhelm Nida-Rümelin .

Career and education

Nida-Rümelin received his first training from his father, the sculptor Wilhelm Nida-Rümelin, in Munich. He then attended the State School for Applied Arts in Nuremberg (now the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg ), where he artistically dealt with a variety of materials such as wood, stone, ceramics, bronze and plaster. In addition, he made inlay work and learned the stucco and fresco technique . From 1930 to 1931 he attended the Berlin Academy with Ludwig Gies . In 1931 he returned to Munich and began studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts with Bernhard Bleeker . In addition, there were significant impulses from Ernst Barlach . Works from this early period are almost only documented in photos. They demonstrate a confrontation with the classical direction, which ultimately came from Aristide Maillol , but also with Expressionism - a field of tension that also determined the choice of teachers.

From 1933 to 1939 he worked as a freelance sculptor in Munich. Numerous sculptures, portraits and portrait medals, small sculptures, oil paintings, watercolors and the frescoes for the former German Hunting Museum in Munich (life-size Ice Age animals) were created. In 1937, for the 200th anniversary of the Georg August University of Göttingen , he created the university's honorary gift, a 91 mm cast iron medal. It bears the portrait of the founder of the university, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen . In 1939 Nida-Rümelin was called up for military service. In 1945 he managed to escape from Soviet captivity. His Schwabing studio was already a victim of the bombs. Since the end of the war he has been working as a freelance sculptor in Munich again. After the creative break forced by the war, it was no longer possible for Nida-Rümelin, in the general climate of a new beginning, to identify with his own early work, which was far back, and to pick up on it again.

After his father's suicide in 1945, Nida-Rümelin moved into his studio in the Hildebrandhaus in Munich-Bogenhausen . From 1951 he lived in the house with his wife Margret and their two children. At the end of 1969 he moved to a studio in Oberföhring , where he worked until his death in 1996.

Rolf Nida-Rümelin is the father of Julian Nida-Rümelin , German philosopher and politician, and Martine Nida-Rümelin , German philosopher.

plant

Kneipp fountain in Dillingen on the Danube
Statue of the saint near the St. Emmeram Bridge in Munich

In his extensive oeuvre, Nida-Rümelin has, among other things, the sculptures Girl with a Jug on Ottostraße in Munich, Reading Boys ⊙ on Torquato-Tasso-Straße in Munich, the Combing in Kitzingen, and the Swarm of Herons in Munich Großhadern or the Carrier pigeon swarm created for Siemens in Witten, but also stone relief cuts like the four ages in Neu-Ulm. He also created powerful bronze portraits such as that of the physicist Walther Gerlach or the journalist Erich Kuby , “also strictly composed animal sculptures and medals with portrait reliefs in silver cast. The simplistic, clearly contoured drawings [...] already show how consciously this artist opposes his will to still be a realistic reproduction ”.

Nida-Rümelin does not get lost in details, but restricts himself to the essentials, reducing his body to what is characteristic and individual. This sense of the characteristic can even extend into the area of ​​caricaturing in animal sculpture. His reclining giraffe or the boar are examples. The wit of these sculptures does not arise from a depicted anecdote, but from an almost inexplicable “optical” humor, which is partly based on the fact that these animals, reproduced in a very natural way, are made up of pointedly assembled abstract forms, such as the long diagonal of the Giraffe neck in relation to the compressed mass of the body or the snake-like thin necks of swans in contrast to the huge surfaces of the wings.

When it comes to portraits, he is not only concerned with achieving an outward resemblance, although this condition is of course fulfilled - often strikingly true to life; Rather, the aim is a more in-depth characterization of the person portrayed without the obtrusiveness of psychological typing. The basis of his portrayal is the certainty that the person manifests himself directly in his or her own external appearance with his own history, that it is the task of the sculptor to find the characteristic peculiarities of a person in the organic context of the shapes of his head in his own rhythm and to highlight. The form is therefore not seen as a means of characterization freely available to the artist, but as the very essence of the person, which the artist must discover and transfer to the organic form of the work of art. This requires that the shapes characteristic in this sense are emphasized, while others that would disturb or distract are omitted. It is characteristic of Nida-Rümelin that he goes beyond grasping the forms themselves and tries to find a correspondence to the individual form character of the person portrayed in the material and in the technique that he chooses.

He proceeds in a similar way with other topics, be it with children in different situations or with nudes. Most of the time he does not wear clothes, hair is often only indicated in its outline, and the formal language always focuses on one point, whether it is blowing on a flute or combing hair. Every movement - and it is these movements that give his figures a clear liveliness - takes place within a closed form, nothing goes beyond that, nothing interrupts the harmony of the overall concept.

Prizes and awards

Fonts

  • Rolf Nida-Rümelin: Sculptures With an introduction by Norbert Knopp. Edition Hanfstaengl, Munich 1980
  • Rolf Nida-Rümelin: sculptures 1980–1990 . Urban and Spieker, Bobingen 1990

literature

  • Otto Josef Bistritzki: Fountain in Munich. Living water in a big city. Callwey, Munich 1974, ISBN 376670303X , pp. 75, 177, 183, 216, 299, 395, 419, 515
  • Carl S. Hecking: Art on the streets. Rheinland Verlag, Cologne 1989, pp. 170–171
  • Monika Dorner: Munich profiles. Götz Druck, Munich 1994, p. 257
  • Hans Kiessling: meeting with sculptors. Munich art scene 1955–1982. EOS Verlag, St. Ottilien 1982, ISBN 3880961832 , pp. 413-417
  • The wood and stone sculptor born in 1951. pp. 9, 12, 13
  • The art and the beautiful home vol. 52. Bruckmann, Munich 1954, pp. 289–291
  • Art and the beautiful home, born 92. Bruckmann, Munich 1980, pp. 343–344
  • Der Naturstein vol. 61. Ebner, Ulm 1966, pp. 278–285
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 137 of 16/17. June 1980, p. 14
  • Steinmetz & Bildhauer, born 1981. Callwey, Munich 1981, pp. 222-227
  • Steinmetz + Bildhauer born 1985, pp. 57–58
  • Münchner Kunstjournal UND, 1985, p. 13
  • Münchner Theaterzeitung, Volume 10, 1986, pp. 80–81
  • Münchner Mosaik, born 16.1990, H. 6, p. 23
  • Münchner Stadtanzeiger of June 21, 1990, p. 5
  • Münchner Stadtanzeiger of November 11, 1993, p. 12
  • Münchener Theaterzeitung vol. 10. Cultura Munich 1986, No. 7, pp. 80–81
  • Nida-Rümelin, Rolf . In: Supreme Building Authority Munich (Hrsg.): Bildwerk Bauwerk Artwork - 30 years of art and state building in Bavaria . Bruckmann, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7654-2308-4 , p. 302-303 .

Web links

Commons : Rolf Nida-Rümelin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christiane Kuller, Maximilian Schreiber: Das Hildebrandhaus . Ed .: Monacensia Literature Archive and Library. Allitera Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-86520-130-0 , p. 130 .
  2. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 137, June 16/17, 1980
  3. ↑ "From the area of ​​the recognizable" in: Munich Mosaik , volume 6. 16 year, 1990
personal data
SURNAME Nida-Rümelin, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Starnberg
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1996
Place of death Munich