MARCKS, GERHARD
Publié le 22/02/2012
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MARCKS, GERHARD (1889–1981), sculptor and graphic artist; directed the
ceramics studio at the Bauhaus.* He was born to a Berlin* grain merchant. His
romantic bent led him into an antitechnology movement. Judging Wilhelmine
culture shallow and pathetic, he aligned himself with the Neue Sezession artistic
group. After studying with August Gaul and Georg Kolbe, opponents of the
Kaiserreich's monumental style, he began sculpting animals. His circle of friends
included the sculptor Richard Scheibe (with whom he served an apprenticeship),
Lyonel Feininger,* and Walter Gropius.* His porcelain models were used by
several firms, including Meissen and Schwarzburg, and in 1914 he provided
figurative reliefs for buildings constructed by Gropius in his Cologne Werkbund
exhibition.
Already a war casualty in 1914, Marcks was assigned to East Prussia* to care
for war cemeteries. Upon his return to Berlin in 1918, he joined the Novembergruppe*
and participated in utopian efforts to build a new world through an
Ethos der Form. His work began combining elements from Expressionism* and
gothic style. Lured to the new Bauhaus by Gropius, he rejected Bruno Taut's*
offer of a position at Berlin's Kunstgewerbeschule. He was among the Bauhaus's
first instructors and directed the ceramics program until, disenchanted by a growing
emphasis on the interdependence of art and technology, he resigned in 1925.
He then accepted a post with a Kunstgewerbeschule near Halle and became the
school's director in 1930.
Although Marcks created an abundance of sculptures in wood and clay, he
turned, on the recommendation of Feininger, to realistic woodcut. Numbered
with Ka¨the Kollwitz* and Ernst Barlach* among the Republic's premier sculptors,
he was nonetheless dismissed in 1933. The NSDAP destroyed many of his
works, and he was forbidden to exhibit those that remained (he was, however,
allowed to work, and he won the Villa Massimo prize in 1934). Two of his
pieces were included in the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art).
Upon resettling in Berlin, he built his own studio in 1939; when it was destroyed
by bombs in 1943, he lost much of his early work. After World War II he taught
at Hamburg's Landeskunstschule and in 1947 finished a project begun by Barlach
before 1933: six large figurines in the facade of the Katharinen Church in
Lu¨beck. The work is judged his outstanding achievement. In 1952 he was
awarded the Pour le Me´rite (Peace Class).
Liens utiles
- Richter, Gerhard - vie et oeuvre du peintre.
- RICHTER Gerhard : Peinture abstraite n° 444 (analyse du tableau).
- Gerhard Berger - Sport.
- Scharnhorst ( Gerhard von), 1754-1813, né à Bordenau (Hanovre), général et patriote prussien.
- Schröder, Gerhard - biographie.