Emy Roeder (30 January 1890 – 7 February 1971) was a
modern
Modern may refer to:
History
*Modern history
** Early Modern period
** Late Modern period
*** 18th century
*** 19th century
*** 20th century
** Contemporary history
* Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century
Philosophy ...
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
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* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
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sculptor
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
born in
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is, after Nuremberg and Fürth, the Franconia#Towns and cities, third-largest city in Franconia located in the north of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. It sp ...
, Germany.
During the first third of the twentieth century she was one of a number of women that were associated with the
German Expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
movement of Modern art.
She was the first woman to achieve ''Master Student'' of sculpture as a student at the
Berlin Academy In 1937 her work was labeled
Degenerate art by the
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
s.
After World War II she was arrested in Italy by the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...
because she was a German citizen and then sent to an internment camp.
She received the
Villa Romana prize in 1936, and was awarded the
Federal Cross of Merit
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (, or , BVO) is the highest state decoration, federal decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It may be awarded for any field of endeavor. It was created by the first List of president ...
for her life work in 1960. She died, aged 81, in
Mainz
Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...
.
Biography
In her late teens from 1908 to 1910 she began to study both drawing and sculpture which led her to further her studies and attend Kunstakademie in Munich, Germany.
She attended for two years, but found her experience to be a “disappointment”.
It was in 1912 that she moved to Darmstadt to study under famous Expressionist sculptor
Bernhard Hoetger.
Unlike the prior, this experience she found “enriching”.
There is no doubt that Roeder's work was greatly influenced by both the ideas and style of Hoetger. After following him around on many of his endeavors she thirsted for greater stimulation and eventually decided to move by herself to Berlin around 1915.
Here she met a great community of fellow artists including “
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz ( born Schmidt; 8 July 186722 April 1945) was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including ''The Weavers'' and ''The Peasa ...
,
Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel (31 July 1883 – 27 January 1970) was a German people, German Painting, painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the group ''Die Brücke'' ("The Bridge") which existed 1905–1913. His work was part of the art competition ...
,
Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, and sculptor Herbert Garbe” who she soon married in 1920.
It was after a productive self-exile that she found her own individuality and artistic vision. During this time alone she was able to closely observe peasant life which became very important in her later work where she romanticized peasant women and found nobility within their challenging lives.
It is sad to say that most of her artwork from the teens and twenties remains little known as it has either been lost, destroyed by Nazis, or was victim of the devastation of the World Wars.
Thankfully her later works have been preserved in a handful of German museums, including Städtische Galerie in her hometown Würzburg, Germany.
After her return from exile she moved back to Berlin during a time of extreme political upheavals and violence. Roeder was one of many that believed art could serve Utopian goals which lead her to join the
Novembergruppe (November Group).
This group of artists put their artwork up to serve the socialist society however this goal quickly became short lived when the focus became more about the promotion of member's exhibitions and less about political activism.
Roeder's work tended to be small in scale and explored a variety of themes including female sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood.
Many of her early works also embraced traditional Christian themes.
She ended up moving to Oberammergau, Germany to study woodcarving which then allowed her to create ''Creche Relief'', which was one of the few works of hers that actually survived the war. It is also important to note that this piece, one of her most Expressionist pieces, is the only known work of Roeder's in a North American Collection, The Robert Gore Rifkind Collection in Beverly Hills, California.
Roeder's work moved back into a state of invoking political change as she strayed from Expressionism and began to take on a new realism also known as
''Die neue Sachlichkeit'' (The New Objectivity).
She became involved in various organizations, exhibitions, and activities that drew attention to women artists and the improvement of social conditions for women. Two important exhibitions at this time that she participated in were “Die schaffende Frau in der bildende Kunst” (The Creative Woman in the Visual Arts) and “Frauen in Not” (Women in Need).
For three years in the late 1920s she maintained membership in the ''Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen'' (Association of Berlin Women Artists) which had been founded in 1867.
Roeder's reputation continued to develop throughout the 1930s. This development was solidified when two of her works were represented in the 1934 survey of 20th-century German sculpture by Alfred Hentzen.
Further assurance came in 1936 as she was awarded the
Villa-Romana Prize, a one-year scholarship at the Villa Romana in Florence.
Receiving this award allowed her to work and study as she owned a studio in the Villa Romana, a German art institute located in Florence that was privately funded. It was in 1937 that she left for Italy in order to “sacrifice her marriage to a solitary existence, full of work and renunciation”.
Despite being away from Germany and the great turmoil there, the impact was still felt as the Nazis came to power and began a battle against all forms of Modern art including Expressionism.
This led to the public denouncement of Roeder's work in 1937 as her sculpture ''Pregnant Woman'' was confiscated by the Nazis and included in the famous exhibition “
Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art) located in Munich, Germany.
The designation of ''Degenerate'' by the Nazis banned her from exhibiting her work in Germany.
Later in 1944 while Florence was occupied by the Allied forces she was identified as an enemy alien and therefore was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Padula.
Here she oversaw the women's bath house, lucky for her she was given the freedom to draw resulting in many sketches of the inmates and their physical movement within the showers. After her release she went back to Rome where she created a series of bronze relief sculptures using the sketches she had made inside the Padula camp. In 1949 her application for Italian citizenship was denied and Roeder returned to Germany.
Here she taught in the Landeskunstschule and became renewed by a vast amount of recognition in her homeland with many exhibitions, prizes, and medals.
Including her participation in the first
documenta
Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany.
Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...
exhibition in
Kassel
Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in North Hesse, northern Hesse, in Central Germany (geography), central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel (region), Kassel and the d ...
in 1955
After years of imprisonment and neglect she was finally able to revitalize her creativity one last time before her death on February 7, 1971.
Principal works
* 1914 – ''Bust of a Girl'', artificial stone, destroyed.
* 1918 – ''Portrait of Herbert Garbe'', artificial stone, destroyed.
* 1919 – ''Pregnant Woman'', terracotta, location unknown.
* 1920 – ''Family'', destroyed.
* 1920 – ''Creche Relief'', wood, Courtesy The Robert Gore Rifkind Collection, Beverly Hills, California.
* 1939 – ''Bather'', terracotta, destroyed.
* 1946 – ''Padula I'', bronze relief, Courtesy Städtische Galerie, Würzburg.
* 1964 – ''Self-Portrait'', bronze, Courtesy Städtische Galerie, Würzburg.
References
Further reading
* Beate Reese: ''Auf der Suche nach Ausdruck und Form. Emy Roeder (1890–1971) und die Plastik ihrer Zeit''.
External links
Self-portrait*
*
Entry for Emy Roederon the
Union List of Artist Names
The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) is a free online database of the Getty Research Institute using a controlled vocabulary, which by 2018 contained over 300,000 artists and over 720,000 names for them, as well as other information about artist ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roeder, Emy
1890 births
1971 deaths
Artists from Würzburg
20th-century German sculptors
German modern sculptors
Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Censorship in Germany
20th-century German women sculptors
Artists in the Degenerate Art exhibition