Gerhard Marcks | |
|---|---|
 Gerhard Marcks (left) withHelmut Schmidt | |
| Born | 18 February 1889 |
| Died | 13 November 1981(1981-11-13) (aged 92) Burgbrohl, West Germany |
Gerhard Marcks (18 February 1889 – 13 November 1981) was a German artist, known primarily as a sculptor, but who is also known for his drawings, woodcuts, lithographs and ceramics.
Marcks was born inBerlin, where, at the age of 18, he worked as an apprentice to sculptorRichard Scheibe.[citation needed] In 1914, he married Maria Schmidtlein, with whom he would raise six children. DuringWorld War I, he served in the German army, which resulted in long-term health problems.[citation needed]
With architectWalter Gropius, German-American painterLyonel Feininger, Scheibe and others, Marcks was a member of two art-related political groups, theNovembergruppe (November Group) and theArbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art).[citation needed] He was also affiliated with theDeutscher Werkbund, of which Gropius was a founding member.[citation needed]
In 1919, when Gropius founded theBauhaus, inWeimar, Marcks was one of the first three faculty members to be hired, along with Feininger andJohannes Itten. Specifically, Marcks was appointed theFormmeister (Form Master) of the school's Pottery Workshop, which was located not in Weimar but in an annex to the school in nearbyDornburg.[1] The other teacher in that workshop, itsLehrmeister (Crafts Master) was Master PotterMax Krehan, the last of a long line of potters, whose workshop was in Dornburg. Krehan taught the students to throw pots on the wheel, to trim and glaze them, and to fire the kiln. Marcks, in addition to duties in Weimar, taught the history of the practice, encouraged experimentation, and sometimes decorated pots.[citation needed]
Earlier, Marcks had made the models for a series of animal sculptures, which were reproduced in China by a porcelain factory. His interest in animal forms is reflected in the work he made for his first Bauhaus portfolio (Neue Europaeische Graphik I), such asDie Katzen ("The Cats") andDie Eule ("The Owl"), both woodcuts.[citation needed] In time, his focus shifted to the human figure, and it was this subject that continued to hold his attention for the rest of his life.
In September 1925, the Bauhaus was relocated toDessau, and its pottery workshop was discontinued. Marcks moved instead to theKunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) inBurg Giebichenstein nearHalle.[1] After the death of its director,Paul Thiersch, Marcks was named his replacement, a position he continued in until 1933.[citation needed] He was fired because his work was deemed unsuitable by theNazis, with the result that several works were in the infamous exhibition of "degenerate art" inMunich in 1937, along with that of other Bauhaus artists, among themHerbert Bayer,Lyonel Feininger,Johannes Itten,Wassily Kandinsky,Paul Klee,László Moholy-Nagy,Oskar Schlemmer andLothar Schreyer.[citation needed]
Despite such persecution, Marcks continued to live in the German city ofMecklenburg throughout World War II. In 1937, when twenty-four of his works were confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis, he was prohibited from exhibiting and threatened with being forbidden to work.[citation needed] During this period, he made several trips to Italy, where he worked in theVilla Romana in Florence and theVilla Massimo in Rome. In 1943, his studio in Berlin was hit during an air raid, and many of his works destroyed.[citation needed]
After World War II, Marcks became Professor of Sculpture at theLandeskunstschule (Regional Art School) inHamburg, where he taught for four years, before retiring toCologne. He also designed memorials for soldiers and civilians who had died in the war, and his work was part of the art competitions at three Olympic Games.[2]
Marcks died in 1981 inBurgbrohl, in theEifel. A decade earlier, theGerhard Marcks Haus, which houses a permanent exhibition of his artwork, was established in his honor inBremen. In this museum are 12,000 of his sketches and preparatory drawings, 900 prints, and all his sculptures (about 350). In the U.S., there is a collection of Marcks' work (68 drawings, 65 prints and 9 nine bronze sculptures) atLuther College inDecorah, Iowa, most of which were given to that school by his former student and close associate,Marguerite Wildenhain. Of particular note is a monumental Marcks bronze statue titledOedipus and Antigone (1960), which was installed there in 2000.[3]
His niece, the caricaturistMarie Marcks (1922–2014) was called theGrande Dame of political caricature.[4]
![Der wiehernde Hengst / The Whinnying Stallion, second casting, 1974[a]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aJustus-liebig-universitaet_gerhard_marcks_Wiehernder_Hengst_philosophikum1_20070805.jpg)
![Sculpture at the Bourdon German war cemetery, Die Mutter [The Mother]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aDeutscher_Soldatenfriedhof_Bourdon_-_Die_Mutter.jpg)
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