Weimar School of Sculpture
The Weimar Sculpture School was founded on November 1st, 1905 by Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst in the so-called “Kunstgewerbeschulbau”, at that time at Kunstschulstrasse 7, to train sculptors. Until 1910 it was under the direction of the sculptor Adolf Brütt (1855–1939). A second wing of the building, attached to the south in 1905/06 for the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Applied Arts , under the direction of Henry van de Velde (1863–1957), could only be opened on April 1, 1908.
The Weimar Sculpture School for Sculptors (at that time the only state training facility in the German Reich) is a sub-project of the project to give a place to the Berlin art politics of modernism of the secessions ( Neues Weimar ), although in a certain sense what Reinhold Begas was taken up again In the founding phase of the Grand Ducal Art School in Weimar after 1860, it should have been able to keep alive the idea of the three-dimensional and plastic elements introduced by Asmus Carstens .
As an initially independent teaching and workshop building, the "Sculpture School" contained the main studio, in which, among other things, Brütts Theodor Mommsendenkmal for Berlin was created, four master class ateliers, a fine art foundry under the direction of the foundry master Emil Schmidt and a modeling workshop with a ceramic kiln. Some of the student works created here were reproduced by the Schwarzburg workshops for porcelain art, for which, in addition to Brütt and his students Wolfgang Schwartzkopff, Franziska von Seeger and Bernhard Sopher , Ernst Barlach and Gerhard Marcks also supplied models. The sculpture school and the arts and crafts school worked together and had a chaser, the master craftsman Egon Dinkloh.
“The young sculptors should not only learn to model in clay, they should also become familiar with the actual material and the execution. Stone is to be purchased from a fund available for this purpose and successful designs are then to be executed in the material. The desire to create is significantly increased, especially since works with beautiful artistic qualities - even if only in sandstone - are to be set up in Weimar Park. "
In 1910, Gottlieb Elster took over the sculpture school, which existed with its bronze foundry now run by master foundry Koehler until the beginning of the war.
The sculptor training was continued as part of the institutional development of the Weimar artist training, among others by Richard Engelmann and Gerhard Marcks .
The end of the Bauhaus in Weimar and its move to Dessau in 1925 also meant the end of the Weimar Sculpture School, which was integrated into the Bauhaus in 1919.
Works by the Weimar School of Sculpture
- Seated image Theodor Mommsen in front of the Humboldt University in Berlin