Christoph Voll

Estate of the Artist
Thence by descent to the present owner

Berlin, Preussische Akademie der Künste, Frühjahrsausstellung, 1928
Stuttgart, Kunstmuseum (on temporary loan from the 1980s)
Bremen, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Christoph Voll, Skulptur zwischen Expressionismus und Realismus, 2007, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Werner Klinkhardt & Georg Biermann, Der Cicerone, Leipzig, 1928, vol. XX, p. 667, illustrated fig. 67
Gustav Kiepenheuer, Das Kunstblatt, Weimar, 1928, p. 186
Anne-Marie Kassay-Friedlander, Der Bildhauer Christoph Voll 1897-1939, Worms, 1994, no. 46, illustrated fig. 67 & on the cover of the catalogue

The wood has split in places and there are some minor marks to areas of the surface. There is some dust within the crevices. This work is overall good condition.
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A dashing young artist, Christoph Voll became one of the most celebrated German sculptors and a forerunner of expressive realism. Sharing the fate of many of his fellow artists, Voll found himself and his art defamed as ‘entartet’ by the Nazi regime at the end of his short life. From 1920, initially as a member of the Dresdner Sezessionsgruppe 1919 and then as Professor, first at the Academy in Saarbrücken and later at the Academy in Karlsruhe, Voll remained at the centre of a dynamic artistic milieu and at the forefront of German art.

A traumatic childhood in an orphanage and his wartime experiences, serving as a soldier at the front during the First World War, left a stark mark on Voll’s work. Turning to recurring themes of melancholy and loss he portrayed scenes from the orphanage, clerics, portraits and the female nude. Voll preferred to work in wood throughout his career, leaving the traces of his working process visible. This raw finish suited his form of Verism; a celebration of meaning over beauty. In his desire to express his emotional experiences, Voll was very much a child of his time where artistic movements such as Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter and later Die Neue Sachlichkeit were noted for their humourless criticism of German society conveying extreme emotion often by non-naturalistic means, whilst at the same time sharing an aversion to complete abstraction. In praise of Voll’s skilful portrayals of ordinary people, the art critic Roberto Tassi referred to him as the ‘Tolstoy of wooden sculpture’.  

During his post as Professor of Sculpture at the Karlsruhe Academy, Voll made the city of Karlsruhe a major centre of Realism in Europe. In 1922 he married the young Danish artist Erna Sørensen, initiating a period of artistic productivity and emotional calm; in 1924 he won the professorial chair at the Academy in Saarbrücken and he exhibited successfully gaining international reputation. By the late 1920s, however, Karlsruhe was marked by violent national-socialist tendencies and when the Nazis came to power in 1933, many of Voll’s colleagues were forcefully entpflichtet from duty and Voll was declared ‘Kulturbolschewist’. At this point he turned away from some of his traditional leitmotifs, dedicating himself to the portrayal of the female body, and in particular the complexity of its movement. In 1937, Voll was dismissed from his position at the academy, and a sculpture titled ‘Schwangere ’depicting a female nude, too expressive to be tolerated by the Nazi regime, was selected for the exhibition of ‘Entartete Kunst’ in Munich.

In a twist of fate, Voll befriended Edvard Munch during a visit to Norway in 1925, sharing with the Norwegian artist this sense of hardship and suffering which affected his work so profoundly. Owing to his friendship with the celebrated artist, large parts of Voll’s œuvre have now survived. Munch, who admired Voll’s ‘…primordial force and deep inner calm’, organised a major exhibition of Voll’s work in the National Gallery in Oslo in 1937. With Voll’s diminishing status in Germany, the exhibition in the prevailing political climate became an increasingly difficult undertaking and all works were stored in the cellars of Christiansborg, the Danish Parliament, for the duration of the Second World War.

During the 1950s, Voll’s wife Erna gradually returned much of the collection to Karlsruhe and later to Stuttgart where the Nachlass Collection is still kept today. Sotheby’s is delighted to be offering three sculptures from this collection. Ranging from expressive intensity in his works on wood to the smooth delicacy in his rare stone-work, Voll imbues the present works with a deep understanding of human nature combined with the raw elements of medium. Dating from the mid-1920s the following three lots were created at a time when Voll was prospering both personally and professionally. Selbstbildnis (lot 171) is symbolic of this time and reflects the young artist’s confidence. Voll was pleased with the outcome and exhibited the work widely during his lifetime. Frauenakt from 1923 (lot 172) and Sich frisierende Schwangere dated circa 1924 (lot 173) are early examples of the female nude which in the 1930s, under the scrutiny and disapproval of the Nazi regime, became, almost reactionary, the focus of Voll’s œuvre. Furthermore, Sich frisierende Schwangere is argued to be Voll’s first attempt to sculpt in stone.

Together, these three examples give an overview and fascinating insight into the œuvre of one of the most sensitive artists of the 20^th century.