Christian Rohlfs
1849 Groß Niendorf ‐ 1938 Hagen
Short information about the artist
Alongside Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs is one of the most important representatives of German Expressionism.
Verkaufte Kunstwerke
Videos about the artist
More information about the artist
Alongside Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs is one of the most important representatives of German Expressionism.
Weimar
He has been studying at the Weimar Art Academy since 1870. At the age of 52 Rohlfs left Weimar and followed the patron Karl-Ernst Osthaus to Hagen. There he orientates himself on role models such as Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch.
Watercolours
The highlights of Rohlf’s work include his watercolours and the late water tempera sheets. Along with the watercolours by Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and August Macke, they are among the most important examples of German art of the first half of the 20th century. While the aforementioned artists often place their motifs wet-on-wet directly on the paper, Rohlfs has developed a special technique with which he superimposes the colors in an almost glazed manner.
Still life with flowers
Flower still lifes have been increasingly present in his work since 1919. This can be traced back to the artist’s marriage to Helene Vogt, who has helped him with his work as a secretary since 1918. Walther Scheidig describes this connection with the following words: “One gets the impression that since the marriage, the young woman’s hand in the studio has always chosen tempting flowers or fruits according to the colours and shapes that stimulated the artist. Art lovers did not ignore the magic of the flower pictures that were created at that time, and so Rohlfs finally found the economic foundation at the age of seventy-five (…). ”(Scheidig. 1965, p. 139.)