Ernst Barlach
Ernst Barlach, (born January 2, 1870, Wedel, Germany—died
October 24, 1938, Güstrow, Germany), outstanding sculptor of
the Expressionist movement whose style has often been called
“modern Gothic.” Barlach also experimented with graphic art
and playwriting, and his work in all media is notable for
its preoccupation with the sufferings of humanity.
Barlach studied art in
Hamburg, Germany, and later in Dresden and Paris. Influenced
early in his career by Jugendstil, Germany’s Art Nouveau
style, he vacillated between pursuing sculpture and the
decorative arts. In 1906 he traveled to Russia, where the
strong bodies and expressive faces of the peasants
stimulated his commitment to sculpture and to the
development of his mature style, which characteristically
features bulky, monumental figures in heavy drapery. In
works such as The Solitary One (1911), details of the figure
are eliminated and the massive forms seem ready to explode
with bound energy. Barlach achieved a rough-hewn quality by
preferring wood, the material used in late Gothic sculpture.
Even when he worked with other, more-contemporary materials,
as in his bronze Death (1925), he often emulated the raw
quality of wood sculpture to achieve a more brutal effect.
Starting about 1910,
Barlach began to pursue a career as a dramatist. His most
notable dramas, Der tote Tag (1912; “The Dead Day”) and Der
Findling (1922; “The Foundling”), combine symbolism and
realism to present the tragic futility of existence. He
often created woodcuts and lithographs to accompany his
written works.
Barlach achieved great fame
in the 1920s and early 1930s, when he executed, among other
works, the celebrated war memorials in Magdeburg and Hamburg
and the religious figures for the Church of St. Katherine in
Lübeck (all in Germany). Although his work was removed from
German museums under the Nazi regime and categorized as
“degenerate art,” after World War II his talent was once
again recognized. Barlach’s former studio in Güstrow,
Germany, was made into a museum, and the Ernst Barlach House
in Hamburg exhibits a large collection of his sculptures,
drawings, and prints.
Encyclopædia
Britannica
