Paul Gangolf (1879-1936) - 1931 Etching Boats In Marseille

Description

A wonderfully gestural etching with plate tone from the German Expressionist artist, Paul Gangolf. The scene shows boats churning up the busy waters of the Marseille coastline. The gestural line work adds an immediacy to the artwork, indicative of Gangolf''s style. The artist has dated in plate to the lower left and signed and inscribed in graphite at the lower edge of the etching. The artist has also inscribed in graphite with the location at the lower edge of the larger sheet (under the mount). The etching has been presented in a simple wood frame with card mount. On wove.

Condition

The condition is typical for a picture of this age including some discolouration. There is some water damage to the upper corner of the larger sheet, hidden by the mount.

Size

11.4 x 13.3cm (4.5" x 5.2")
Framed Size: 39.1 x 31cm (15.4" x 12.2")

Artist Biography

Paul Gangolf was born as Paul Löwy in Königsberg in 1879. The family was of Jewish faith. Paul Löwy spent his youth in Wiesbaden. From 1901 he lived in Berlin. It is not known when he started using the stage name Gangolf . From 1907 at the latest, he used it as a pseudonym for articles he had written in socialist pamphlets.
Gangolf trained as a bookseller. The Hamburg collector Gustav Schiefler acquired a small oil sketch by Gangolf in 1912/13 and planned to create a catalog raisonné of Gangolf's prints, as he had previously done for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Emil Nolde , Max Liebermann and Edvard Munch , among others . However, due to Schiefler's death in 1935, this plan was never realized.
During the First World War he served as a volunteer recruit in Ihringen . In 1915 he was a soldier in Wismar and the following year in Macedonia.

From 1919 Gangolf was based in Berlin again. He was mainly concerned with lithography . In the same year the first Paul-Gangolf portfolio was published. Through the mediation of Schiefler, the Hamburger Kunsthalle acquired some of his works. In 1923 the Metropolis folder was published by Malik Verlag in Berlin and the Großstadt folder was published by Oskar Wöhrle in Constance. From 1926 onwards, further works by Ernst Rathenau (1897–1986) were published by Euphorion Verlag in Berlin.

In 1926 Gangolf moved to Paris, financially supported by Heinrich Stinnes . There he occasionally took part in exhibitions. After 1930 Gangolf's situation worsened again considerably. He lived temporarily in London, returned to Paris and from August 1932 lved again in Berlin. In the spring of 1933 an exhibition of him took place in the art club. Gangolf was arrested after the NSDAP came to power following a denunciation on the street in Berlin, spent a few months in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp and was deported to the Esterwegen concentration camp . At the end of May 1935 he was shot and treated in the Sögel hospital. In August 1936 he was returned to the Esterwegen concentration camp and shot in a nearby forest on August 12, 1936.