Christoph Voll - Ruhende

Christoph Voll

Ruhende
Circa 1930

White Carrara marble Height 48 cm Unsigned. Unique piece. Aside from the marble, there are two versions in red and black granite, both varying in size, and a plaster version.

The sculptor and draughtsman Christoph Voll was a well-known and highly esteemed artist in the late 1920s and 1930s, but became almost completely forgotten after the dramatic events of World War II. His untimely death and the impact of the War on his production and oeuvre has meant that despite being widely represented at German museums and having several publications and solo exhibitions devoted to his work in recent decades - most recently at the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus in Bremen in 2007 - his sculptures and graphics are still considered somewhat of an insider tip. At this auction we are able to offer “Ruhende”, which was included in the first major monograph on Christoph Voll, written by Wilhelm Weber in 1975.
Christoph Voll was born in Munich as the son of a sculptor and a painter, but spent the majority of his childhood in an orphanage. The privations he experienced there and the difficult living conditions of the common people, with which he was confronted from a very young age, left their mark on his work. As a 15-year-old Voll began an apprenticeship as a sculptor in Dresden; and after four years of wartime military service during WW1, he continued his training at the academy in Dresden. In 1920, the artist joined the “Dresden Secession Group 1919” where he become close friends with artists like Otto Dix and Conrad Felixmüller.
In 1924 Voll moved to Saarbrücken, where he had been offered a teaching position at the local art academy. He was named a professor the following year, but moved again in 1928, after winning the chair in sculpture at the Landeskunstschule in Karlsruhe.
The 1920s were defined by the artist's very active participation in exhibitions. During this period, he created expressively realistic sculptures in wood, which portray workers, beggars, farmers and children with a penetrating individuality. From 1928, following his appointment and the associated income, Voll turned to stone as his primary material and created a series of female nudes like “Ruhende”, in which a powerful, quiescent sensuality stands in contrast to the hardness of the stone.
When the Nazis seized power, Voll was labelled “degenerate”, but was initially able to continue in his teaching position and still exhibit his work in 1935. Two years later, works by him were shown in the “Degenerate Art”, exhibition in Munich and he was dismissed from his position.
Christoph Voll died in 1939 at the age of 42. His widow, the Danish painter Erna Sørensen, had fled to Denmark with their daughter and there, in Copenhagen, a substantial part of the artist's estate was safeguarded during the War. In the following years, the collection was returned to Karlsruhe, where the director of Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Dr Kurt Martin, spearheaded the creation of a new inventory of Voll's work. It is this collection which today forms the Christoph Voll Nachlass Sammlung.

List of works

Kassay-Friedländer 92

Certificate

We would like to thank Kristoffer Damgaard, Christoph Voll Nachlass Sammlung (estate collection), Copenhagen, for confirmatory and additional information.

Provenance

Estate of the artist; Private possession, Denmark

Literature

Wilhelm Weber, Der Bildhauer Christoph Voll, Milan 1975, with full-page illus. no. 31; Anne-Marie Kassay-Friedländer, Der Bildhauer Christoph Voll, 1897-1939, Worms 1994, p. 168-169

Exhibitions

Munich/Milan 1981 (Galleria del Levante), Christoph Voll. Skulpturen, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, with full-page illus. p. 27