Gerhard Marcks
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person 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.
Early lifeEdit
Marcks was born in Berlin, where, at the age of 18, he worked as an apprentice to sculptor Richard Scheibe.Template:Citation needed In 1914, he married Maria Schmidtlein, with whom he would raise six children. During World War I, he served in the German army, which resulted in long-term health problems.Template:Citation needed
With architect Walter Gropius, German-American painter Lyonel Feininger, Scheibe and others, Marcks was a member of two art-related political groups, the Novembergruppe (November Group) and the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art).Template:Citation needed He was also affiliated with the Deutscher Werkbund, of which Gropius was a founding member.Template:Citation needed
Bauhaus masterEdit
In 1919, when Gropius founded the Bauhaus, in Weimar, Marcks was one of the first three faculty members to be hired, along with Feininger and Johannes Itten. Specifically, Marcks was appointed the Formmeister (Form Master) of the school's Pottery Workshop, which was located not in Weimar but in an annex to the school in nearby Dornburg.<ref name="Fiell">Template:Cite book</ref> The other teacher in that workshop, its Lehrmeister (Crafts Master) was Master Potter Max 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.Template: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 as Die Katzen ("The Cats") and Die Eule ("The Owl"), both woodcuts.Template: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.
Further careerEdit
In September 1925, the Bauhaus was relocated to Dessau, and its pottery workshop was discontinued. Marcks moved instead to the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Burg Giebichenstein near Halle.<ref name="Fiell" /> After the death of its director, Paul Thiersch, Marcks was named his replacement, a position he continued in until 1933.Template:Citation needed He was fired because his work was deemed unsuitable by the Nazis, with the result that several works were in the infamous exhibition of "degenerate art" in Munich in 1937, along with that of other Bauhaus artists, among them Herbert Bayer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer and Lothar Schreyer.Template:Citation needed
Despite such persecution, Marcks continued to live in the German city of Mecklenburg 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.Template:Citation needed During this period, he made several trips to Italy, where he worked in the Villa Romana in Florence and the Villa Massimo in Rome. In 1943, his studio in Berlin was hit during an air raid, and many of his works destroyed.Template:Citation needed
After World War II, Marcks became Professor of Sculpture at the Landeskunstschule (Regional Art School) in Hamburg, where he taught for four years, before retiring to Cologne. 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Death and legacyEdit
Marcks died in 1981 in Burgbrohl, Eifel. A decade earlier, the museum called Gerhard Marcks Haus, which houses a permanent exhibition of his artwork, was established in his honor in Bremen, Germany. 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) at Luther College in Decorah, 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 titled Oedipus and Antigone (1960), which was installed there in 2000.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
His niece, the caricaturist Marie Marcks (1922-2014) was called the Grande Dame of political caricature.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Honors and exhibitionsEdit
- In 1914 Marcks participated in exhibitions of the Berlin Secession and the Deutscher Werkbund,<ref name="Deutsche Biographie">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref> after World War II at the Venice Biennale and the Documentas I (1955), II (1959) and III (1964) in Kassel.<ref name="Gerhard Marcks 2016">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Arend 2020">Template:Cite news</ref>
- In 1949 the city of Frankfurt am Main awarded him the Goethe Plaque.<ref name="FRANKFURT.DE - DAS OFFIZIELLE STADTPORTAL">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- In 1952 he was appointed a Knight of the Peace Class of the Order Pour le Mérite.<ref name="ORDEN POUR LE MÉRITE">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- In 1954 North Rhine-Westphalia awarded him its Grand Art Prize.<ref name="Galerie Pamme-Vogelsang" />
- In 1955 the city of Berlin awarded him its Art Prize.<ref name="Akademie der Künste, Berlin">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- In 1962 the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, made him an honorary member<ref name="Bürgerstiftung Halle">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- In 1979 he was honored on his 90th birthday by exhibitions in Berlin, Bremen, Cologne and Nuremberg, as well as by the award of the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.<ref name="Galerie Pamme-Vogelsang">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- In 1980 the American Academy of Letters, New York, made him an honorary member, together with Max Ernst and Karlheinz Stockhausen.<ref name="Bürgerstiftung Halle" />
- In 1991 10778 Marcks (1991 gn10), a minor planet (asteroid) was discovered on 9 April, and named in his honor.<ref name="Borngen. 1991">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
GalleryEdit
- Bremen.band.500pix.jpg
A bronze statue depicting the Bremen Town Musicians located in Bremen
- Hh-friedhof-ohlsdorf-bombenopfer.jpg
Hamburg, Ohlsdorf Cemetery, memorial for the victims of the aerial warfare
- Skulptur Die Trauernde Koeln2007.jpg
Die Trauernde / The Mourner in front of the St. Maria im Kapitol church in Cologne.
- Rheinpark-Köln-f-Gaea-100.JPG
Gaea (1965), in the Rosengarten, Rheinpark, Cologne
- Justus-liebig-universitaet gerhard marcks Wiehernder Hengst philosophikum1 20070805.jpg
Der wiehernde Hengst / The Whinnying Stallion, second casting, 1974Template:Efn
- Trauernde Alte Marcks Bochum 2008.jpg
"The mourner old Woman" (1955), Bochum
- Gerhard Marcks Mahnmal Alter Friedhof.jpg
Memorial, 1968, Mülheim an der Ruhr
- Gaea II - Gerhard Marcks.jpg
Stollwerkpassage, 1965,Cologne
- Mannheim Kunsthalle Skulpturengarten Gerhard Marcks Zwei Freunde 2.jpg
Two Friends (Konradin and Friedrich), Bronze, 1936
- Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Bourdon - Die Mutter.jpg
Sculpture at the Bourdon German war cemetery, Die Mutter [The Mother]