Bernhard Pankok (1872 Münster - 1943 Baierbrunn), General Wilhelm von Blume, 1915, aquatint etching, 34 x 29,5 cm (sheet size), …
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Bernhard Pankok (1872 Münster - 1943 Baierbrunn), General Wilhelm von Blume, 1915, aquatint etching, 34 x 29,5 cm (sheet size), 26 x 22 cm (plate size), signed at upper left in the plate, at lower right in lead and dated at lower left in lead.
- lower left old collection stamp, at the right wide margin with small spot, otherwise in very good condition
about the artwork
The 1915 aquatint etching of General Wilhelm von Blume is based on an oil painting from 1912, which is located m LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur Münster. A second portrait of the general in oil from Pankok's hand belongs to the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. When Pankok created the exemplary oil portrait in 1912, the general had already been retired for 16 years. Consequently, it is a retrospective portrait. Accordingly, the orientation of the head is such that he looks back in both the oil painting and the etching. Without fixing anything concrete, he pensively looks inward and reviews his life. Uniformed and highly endowed depicted, it is above all his military activities that he reviews attentively and - as his gaze reveals - quite critically.
Pankok has literally written the sum of his experiences on Wilhelm von Blume's face: The physiognomy forms a veritable landscape of folds, furrows, elevations and ravines, which comes into its own all the more against the flat background. It becomes clear that each of the orders has also been won through suffering. However, due to the depiction breaking the boundaries of the picture, his bust looks like an unshakable massif, which gives the general a stoic trait.
That the design of the portrait was important to Pankok is evident from the various states alone, whereby the present sheet is the third, probably final revision, which Pankok dates exactly to February 18, 1915. Compared to the previous state, the light background now has a dark area in front of which the sitter's face stands out, whereby the dark background in turn combines with the uniform and thus creates a new tension in the picture.
Pankok's taking up of his portrait of the high-ranking military veteran and its graphic reproduction can also be seen against the background of the First World War, which had broken out in the meantime. Acts of war, with all their tales of woe, were once again the order of the day, with Wilhelm von Blume's warfare and military writings, in the face of modern weapons of mass destruction, relics of a more value-oriented time gone by.
to the artist
After studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1889 to 1891 under Heinrich Lauenstein, Adolf Schill, Hugo Crola and Peter Janssen the Elder, Bernhard Pankok went to Munich in 1892, where he worked primarily as a graphic artist for the two major magazines of the Jugendstil, "Pan" and "Jugend", which established his artistic success. Through this activity he met Emil Orlik, with whom he had a lifelong friendship.
In 1897 he exhibited his first furniture and in 1898, along with Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Hermann Obrist, he was the founder of the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk. At the Paris World's Fair of 1900, he was awarded the "Grand Prix" for the design of an oriel room.
His work as an architect also began with the construction of the Lange House in Tübingen in 1901. Thus, in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement, Pankok was a 'universal artist', for whom art did not break down into 'high art' and 'applied art', but represented something comprehensive that extended into everyday objects.
Also in 1901, he married Antonette Coppenrath, a sister of the landscape painter Ferdinand Coppenrath, and in the same year received a call to the Königliche Lehr- und Versuchswerkstätte der Kunstgewerbeschule Stuttgart. with the completion of the new building of the School of Arts and Crafts, built from 1908 onwards according to Pankok's designs, Pankok became its director in 1913 and held this post until 1937.
In 1907 Pankok became a member of the Berlin Secession and the Deutscher Werkbund. He went on to design salons for steamships and cabins for zeppelins, among other things, and also created stage sets for operas. Pankok was one of the leading artists at the pioneering Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914. Because of his reputation, he was made a foreign member of the Munich Secession in 1930, an honorary member of the Westphalian Art Association in Münster in 1932, and an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich a year later.
Although urged to do so, Pankok refused membership in the NSDAP and retired in 1937.
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