Otto Pankok (6 June 1893 – 10 October 1966) was a German
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
,
printmaker
Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...
, and
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 ...
.
Biography
Pankok was born in
Mülheim
Mülheim, officially Mülheim an der Ruhr () and also described as ''"City on the River"'', is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen. It is home to many compan ...
on the
Ruhr
The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...
. In 1912 he began his formal training as an artist at the Art Academies in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
and
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
. After only a few months he left the Weimar Academy, where his teachers were
Fritz Mackensen
Fritz Mackensen (born 8 April 1866 in Greene, near Kreiensen, Duchy of Brunswick – 12 May 1953 in Bremen) was a German painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting and Art Nouveau. He was a friend of Otto Modersohn and Hans am Ende, and w ...
and
Albin Egger-Lienz
Albin Egger-Lienz (29 January 1868 – 4 November 1926) was an Austrian painter known especially for rustic genre and historical paintings.
Career
He was born in Dölsach-Stribach near Lienz, in what was the county of Tyrol. He was the natural s ...
, and went on a study trip to the
Netherlands
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, image_map =
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, established_title = Before independence
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with Werner Gilles. Afterwards (1914), he spent two months in Paris, where he attended the Académie russe and the
Académie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.
History
The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acadé ...
. Between 1914 and 1917 he was a soldier in France in World War I.
Returning to Düsseldorf in 1919, he was a founder of the "Junge Rheinland" (Young Rhineland) group. With
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with Geor ...
,
Gert Heinrich Wollheim
Gert Heinrich Wollheim (11 September 1894 – 22 April 1974) was a German expressionist painter later associated with the New Objectivity, who fled nazi Germany and worked in the United States after 1947.
Life and work
Gert Heinrich Wollheim wa ...
, and
Adolf Uzarski
Adolf Uzarski (April 14, 1885 – July 14, 1970) was a German writer, artist, and illustrator associated with the New Objectivity movement.
He was born in Ruhrort bei Duisburg and studied at the Cologne School of Architecture before enrolling in 1 ...
, among others, he was one of the painters championed by the art dealer
Johanna Ey
Johanna Ey (4 March 1864 – 27 August 1947) was a German art dealer during the 1920s. She became known as ''Mutter Ey'' (Mother Ey) for the nurturing support she provided to her artists, who included Max Ernst and Otto Dix.
Biography
Ey was ...
. In 1921 he married the journalist Hulda Droste and their daughter Eva was born in 1925.
When
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
came to power in 1933, Pankok was declared a
degenerate art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
ist. Subsequently, 56 of his pictures were seized from museums, some of which were included in the infamous exhibition ''Entartete Kunst'' (
Degenerate Art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
), mounted by the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
s in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Da ...
,
Gotthard Graubner
Gotthard Graubner (13 June 1930 – 24 May 2013) was a German painter, born in Erlbach, in Saxony, Germany.
Graubner studied at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts in Germany, be ...
and
Günther Uecker
Günther Uecker (; born 13 March 1930) is a German sculptor, op artist and installation artist.
Biography
Uecker was born in Wendorf, Mecklenburg."Wie Uecker zu Pankok kam", ''SVZ'', 15 December 2014. /ref> were among his students.
After retirement, he moved to Haus Esselt in Drevenack, where after his death in a museum showing a selection from his work with archive was set up.
Except in the years of the Nazi regime, Pankok traveled extensively and painted on his journeys. He died in
Wesel
Wesel () is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the capital of the Wesel district.
Geography
Wesel is situated at the confluence of the Lippe River and the Rhine.
Division of the city
Suburbs of Wesel include Lackhausen, Obrighove ...
.
Work
Pankok's works are typically large monochrome paintings. He also created an extensive body of graphic work, notably
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
s and
monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix (printing), matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to ac ...
s. Pankok's pictures show humans, animals and landscapes, realistically and expressively, often depicting people at the edge of society. Pankok also created over 200 (mostly small scale) bronze sculptures. From 1924 to 1933 Pankok regularly contributed portrait drawings to the
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
daily newspaper "Der Mittag".
Particularly notable are the pictures of Roma and Sinti he had befriended in the late 1920s in Düsseldorf. They also modelled for him during 1931 to 1934 for a series of 60 pictures showing Christ's passion, a book version of which was printed but had to be immediately destroyed before it could be sold. The book was reissued after the war.
Notes
References
*Barron, Stephanie, ed. (1991). ''"Degenerate Art:' The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
*Axel Feuß, "Pankok, Otto", in ''Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon'', edited by Andreas Beyer, Bénédicte Savoy and
Wolf Tegethoff
Wolf Tegethoff (born 1953) is a German art historian, an expert on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and currently, with Ulrich Pfisterer, director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich.
Tegethoff studied art history, urban design, economi ...
. Vol. 94. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2016, pp. 253–254.
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...
database of the
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...