Wolf reed

Wolf Röhricht (* as Wilhelm Hermann Wolfgang Röhricht on April 20, 1886 in Liegnitz in Lower Silesia ; † December 29, 1953 in Munich ) was a German painter and graphic artist who mainly created landscape impressions, as well as industrial pictures and portraits . His preferred technique for watercolors was the wet-on-wet technique . Stylistically, he was close to Expressionism , some find the term expressive realism more appropriate.

Life

His father was the lawyer Wilhelm Röhricht. His mother was Anna Röhricht, née Lucas; like her father, she came from Breslau . In his youth he was taken by his parents on hikes through the Giant Mountains , which made a lasting impression on him.

In 1905 he began at the behest of parents studying law . In Munich, parallel to his studies, he was taught how to paint with watercolors by Heinrich Knirr in his painting school, which resulted in the first landscape watercolors. In 1911 he moved to Berlin , where he became friends with the late impressionist Waldemar Rösler . Together they went on art-viewing trips , of which the one to Paris would have consequences. First, however, he ended 1913, the law school in Greifswald awarded the degree of Dr. jur. Then he stayed in Dresden for some time . Finally, under the impression of the Fauves and Nabis artists , he decided to pursue further artistic studies in Paris with Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard at the Académie Julian in Paris. During this time, his admiration for Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse also grew . Still in the eventful year 1913, he returned to Berlin towards the end of it and joined the Free Secession, which was being founded. Three of his pictures were then displayed at their first exhibition in 1914 in the well-known neighborhood of Ernst Barlach , Max Beckmann , Max Liebermann , August Macke and prominent foreign artists. Further exhibitions followed as part of the Secession.

Due to health reasons, he did two years of civilian service in Lublinitz in Upper Silesia during the First World War , where he saw large ironworks and blast furnace complexes - his second great source of inspiration after the Giant Mountains hikes.

From January 16 to February 28, 1918, he was represented in a group exhibition at the Kunstverein Hamburg alongside Dietz Edzard , Heinrich Heußer and Paul Kahler . Ferdinand Möller had just opened a second art shop in Berlin in 1918 and had been elected the new managing director of the Free Secession. Due to the fact that he ran his first shop in Breslau, i.e. Röhricht's closer home, he was fond of the young artist and offered him the premiere of a solo exhibition in November 1918, which showed portraits, still lifes , landscapes (especially mountain impressions) and industrial representations. At the same time, Möller published a portfolio of lithographs with eight Upper Silesian ironworks under the title Das Hüttenwerk in the graphic publishing house affiliated with the gallery . In 1919 the National Gallery in Berlin bought some pictures. Along with Paul Klee put reeds 1920 at Fritz Gurlitt from the 1921 lithographed Venice wallet in hand coloring brought out. In Hannover reeds exhibited in January 1921st Again it was a split show, the other half was dedicated to modern Czech art. It was organized by the Kestner Society . The connection to Hanover was maintained until after the war , and not only because pictures from the Provincial Museum, today's Lower Saxony State Museum , had been purchased.

In 1923 Röhricht did a commissioned work in the church in Klemzig , the wall painting The Story of Adam and Eve . His son Klaus was born on April 29, 1924. In 1925 the blast furnaces lithograph portfolio was published by Bavaria-Verlag . From 1926 he taught at the painting school of the Association of Berlin Women Artists . In the meantime, due to the dissolution of the Free Secession , he had joined the original Berlin Secession , and he was also a member of the German Association of Artists and the Association of Artists of Silesia . He exhibited in important galleries, e.g. B. 1927 in the newly opened branch of the Heinrich Thannhauser gallery and again in 1928 in the Ferdinand Möller gallery. The Ministry of Culture gave him in 1930 the training for professional artists and art teachers . His students included Thea Hucke , who was barely ten years his junior and who later lived in the Federal Republic , and Karl Eifler , who later lived and worked in the GDR .

On trips to France , Norway , Sweden , Czechoslovakia, Tunisia , Algeria and Egypt , he continuously trained himself. Even Italy was among his goals because he had a scholarship for the Villa Massimo in Rome received. The same goes for the Alpine region of Austria , as mountain landscapes never let him go in his life.

In 1937 he contributed six watercolors as book illustrations for the novel Short Journey to Another Star by Karl Friedrich Borée . Some works bought by German museums fell victim to the National Socialist art terror because they were removed. Reeds have been considered degenerate since 1935 , but have been able to keep his person harmless over the years. A large part of his work before 1945 was relocated to the Kuchelberg City Palace near Liegnitz at the end of the war and - if not destroyed or stolen - has since been lost due to incomprehensible relocations. In 1945 he turned his back on the destroyed Berlin and settled in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , very close to Richard Strauss . Not far from Munich, he was accepted into the Munich New Secession . He finally moved his residence directly to Munich in 1948, which enabled him to work on the board of directors of the Haus der Kunst . From September 9 to November 19, 1949, Röhricht exhibited in the house in the first major Munich art exhibition, which brought together the three local artists 'associations, the Munich Artists' Cooperative , the Secession and the New Group that had emerged from the New Munich Secession and to which Röhricht belonged of art. In addition to landscapes, Röhricht also showed the portrait of the physicist Walther Gerlach , which was acquired by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen .

In 1950 he participated in the International Exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh . Its art director , Homer Saint-Goudes, assured the artist that he was one of the first fifteen painters in Germany. In 1951 he exhibited in Hamburg ( Galerie Commeter ), and in the following years several times in Munich in urban and private spaces. In the meantime, he had become the second chairman of the Secession. Three quarters of a year before his death on December 29, 1953, an exhibition took place from April 6 to 26, together with Wilhelm Schnarrenberger, at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe .

His work includes drawings, lithographs, woodcuts , watercolors, ink- mixed media pictures and oil paintings , many of which are in the possession of the Museum of Haus Schlesien near Bonn .

Special painting technique

The watercolors are painted using the wet-on-wet technique. This means that the watery-thin watercolors flow into one another. The process is often only used for backgrounds such as sky, but Röhricht deliberately painted the picture entirely in this style. Mountain impressions that were created outdoors were reworked in the studio, because the often freezing cold made the watercolors freeze, which he then gently thawed again in order to be able to direct the color crystals into paths he intended and thus create finely blurred contours. In his essay On pictorial watercolor and my technique for the German magazine for painting technique in 1944 he gave an insight into his working method and dispelled the prejudice that watercolors are of less artistic value than oil paintings.

Characterizations

1919 :

“Röhricht is not one of those young fanatics who swore once and for all to one artistic direction and thus pushed themselves onto a dead track. His talent protects him from this. Full of sensual joy in color, he follows his somewhat daring temperament. And that is why the layman, who is skeptical of the most modern art, will soon be reconciled with the color tones of this Expressionism; he is drawn to the unsavory and natural. "

2010 :

“It was not the industrial working world of people - as shown by Adolph von Menzel in his painting Eisenwalzwerk (1872–1875) - but the industrial landscape as an ensemble of factories and industrial buildings that interested the painter Wolf Röhricht. Röhricht actually produced landscape paintings in which mountains and trees are replaced by factory buildings, conveyor belts, chimneys and, in particular, blast furnaces. The working person, if he occurs at all, has only one role to complete the picture. That may be the reason why Wolf Röhricht is often not noticed as an industrial painter, more known as a painter of landscapes, still lifes and portraits. "

Solo exhibitions

• Special exhibition Wolf Röhricht : Galerie Ferdinand Möller, Berlin; January 15 - February 14, 1928.
• Retrospective Wolf Röhricht (1886–1953) : Galerie von Abercron Cologne-Munich in cooperation with the Stiftung Kulturwerk Schlesien, Würzburg; July 5 - August 12, 1978.
• Wolf Röhricht - watercolors / akwarele : Jauer Regional Museum, Jawor; September 14, 1997 - October 30, 1997.
• Blast furnaces and ports. Industrial pictures from Upper Silesia and the Ruhr area by Wolf Röhricht (1886–1953) : Upper Silesian State Museum, Ratingen-Hösel; December 5, 1999 - April 30, 2000.
• With the eyes of an artist - travel impressions by the painter Wolf Röhricht (1886–1953). Exhibition on the 50th anniversary of the artist's death : Haus Schlesien, Königswinter-Heisterbacherrott; June 15 - September 14, 2003.
• Wolf Röhricht - a virtuoso of watercolors : special exhibition by House of Silesia in Leubus Monastery, Lubiąż (Poland); May 24 - October 10, 2008.
• Industrial views by Wolf Röhricht : Stiftung Kulturwerk Schlesien / Grafschaftsmuseum Wertheim (Silesian Cabinet), Wertheim; July 20 - October 31, 2010.
• Light and landscape. Watercolors by Wolf Röhricht (1886–1953) : House of Silesia / Leubus Monastery, Königswinter-Heisterbacherrott; September 7, 2013 - March 9, 2014.

literature

• Young Czech art, Wolf Röhricht. Paintings, watercolors, drawings. Jan. 5 - Feb. 3, 1921. Kestner-Ges. eV, Hanover 1921.
• Directory of the special exhibition Wolf Röhricht. Jan 15 - Feb 14, 1928. The gallery [Galerie Ferd. Möller], Berlin 1928.
• Wolf reed, watercolors. Lower Silesian Museum Liegnitz in connection with the Art Ring XVIII (Liegnitz) in the Art Association Lower Silesia. Exhibition from 17 to 31 Jan 1943 in the Lower Silesian Museum in Liegnitz. Lower Silesian Art Association, [Breslau] 1943.
• Wolfgang Scheffler: Wolf Röhricht. Memory exhibition. Oil paintings, watercolors. Municipal Gallery, Munich 1955.
• Ernst Schremmer: Wolf Röhricht - pictures and watercolors. Delp Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 0-376-89159-9 .
• Wolf Röhricht (1886 Liegnitz - 1953 Munich). Watercolors, graphics. On the occasion of an exhibition at the gallery of Abercron Cologne-Munich. Abercron Gallery, Cologne / Munich 1978.
• Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau: Wolf Röhricht. Watercolors. Hirmer, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7774-4230-5 .
• Wolf Röhricht - watercolors. Exhibition catalog Jawor Regional Museum / Poland through House Silesia. Museum of Regional Studies, Königswinter 1997.
• Peter Mraß, Albrecht Tyrell (texts and editing): Blast furnaces and ports. Industrial pictures from Upper Silesia and the Ruhr area by Wolf Röhricht (1886–1953). Exhibition in the Oberschlesisches Landesmuseum Ratingen-Hösel, December 5, 1999 - April 30, 2000. Oberschlesisches Landesmuseum, Ratingen around 2002.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ osthessen-news.de , accessed on December 14, 2013.
2. ↑ kettererkunst.de , accessed on December 14, 2013.
3. ↑ expressiverrealismus.de ( Memento from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 14, 2013.
4. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Ordinary members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Röhricht, Wolf ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 24, 2015)
5. ↑ hausschlesien.de ( Memento from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 14, 2013.
6. ↑ Walther Haas: The painter Wolf Röhricht . In: German art and decoration . tape 44 , June, 1919, pp. 114 ( The painter Wolf Röhricht [accessed December 14, 2013]).
7. ↑ grafschaftsmuseum.de , accessed on December 14, 2013.

Web links

• Photo: Reeds paints in the snow ( Memento from November 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 14, 2013.