Ernst Barlach
The impressions of his trip to Russia in 1906 released Ernst Barlach from a deep artistic crisis. The radical simplification of form on the one hand and the mystical stylization on the other led him to his very own means of expression. Not only the sculptural works, but also the graphic works, the woodcuts and lithographs, shared a newly acquired simplicity, which, accompanied by a generalization and typification of the figure, at the same time seems to be moved by an inner dynamic. Barlach responded to the deeply felt distress and emotional shocks of his time, to the rootlessness of modernity, with a large form that renounces all trivialities, an archaic human image of immense imagination and unconditional humanity.
curriculum vitae
| 1870 | born in Wedel, childhood in Schoenberg in Mecklenburg and in Ratzeburg |
| 1884 | Death of the father |
| 1888-1891 | Studied at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Hamburg under Michael Hornung and Richard Thiele |
| 1891-1895 | Studied at the Koenigliche Akademie der Kuenste in Dresden under the sculptor Robert Diez |
| 1895-1897 | Two longer study visits to Paris |
| 1897-1899 | Studio partnership with Carl Garbers, sculptural gable design at Hamburg-Altona town hall |
| 1904 | Through the mediation of Peter Behrens teacher at the Fachschule für Keramik in Hoehr-Grenzhausen |
| 1906 | In a deep artistic crisis, travels to his brother Hans in Russia respectively in the Ukraine, the impressions of the journey provide the essential impulse for the simplification and stylization of his figures |
| 1907 | Exhibition of the terracottas »Russian Beggar Woman with Bowl« and »Blind Russian Beggar« in the Spring Salon of the Berlin Secession |
| 1909 | Scholarship holder at the Villa Romana in Florence |
| 1910 | Relocation to Guestrow, construction of a residential and studio building on the Inselsee lake |
| Begins regular exhibitions in Berlin, at the Sezession, the Sonderbund and Paul Cassirer's Gallery | |
| 1915 | called up for military service during the First World War |
| 1925 | Honorary member of the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Muenchen (Munich Academy of Fine Arts) |
| 1922 | Inauguration of the »Mother of Sorrows« memorial in Kiel |
| 1927 | War memorial »Der Schwebende« (The Floating One) in Guestrow Cathedral |
| 1929 | Memorial in Magdeburg Dom |
| 1933 | »Pour le mérite« for science and the arts |
| 1936 | Honorary member of the Wiener Secession and honorary member of the Kuenstlerverband Oesterreichischer Bildhauer (Austrian Sculptors' Association) of the Akademie der bildenden Kuenste Wien (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) |
| 1938 | died in Rostock |
He created stage and pictorial works, all characterized by a higher simplicity; only the tested, driven spirit attains them in the end. No one was less earthbound than this artist, who had nevertheless learned to make the mute beings around him speak and to give the unconscious their most intimate form.
Heinrich Mann, Die größte Macht, 1938
Behind the apparent poverty of Barlach's ornamentality lives a richness of form that is not often found today. What might seem emotionless is very often the result of a violent outburst, what looks like unnatural stylization to the casual glance is the inwardly muted expression of someone shuddering under the demons of his temperament, someone sobbing passionately, someone intoxicated by the drama of fate in everyday life.
Ernst Barlach, in: Kunst und Künstler, Jahrgang 8, 1909/1910
This is what we call simplicity in art. (...) In the beginning there was rhythm, and it is rhythm that transforms the merely cut block of the body into the expression of a unity of life. It is this rhythm of the body that does not push out the body movement as a mechanics of the limbs, but rather permeates the whole body as a function of the will. The desert preacher is completely vertical, the walker completely diagonal - here the rhythm of the body is the tuning fork of life.
Ernst Barlach, Berlin: Henschelverlag 1989
