Christian Rohlfs

The painter and graphic artist Christian Rohlfs was an unusually adaptable artist who only received public acclaim late in life. After studying at the Großherzogliche Kunstschule he initially stayed in Weimar before he moved to Hagen after being asked by Karl Ernst Osthaus to take on the management of a school of painting at the Folkwang Museum. While still in Weimar Rohlfs focussed on landscape painting. This was accompanied by a tendency away from realism towards Impressionism. After a brief Neo-Impressionist phase (1902/03) he ultimately turned to Expressionism. Rohlfs was a member of the Berlin Secession and, from 1914, the Freie Sezession, among others. On the occasion of his 75^th birthday, he was made an honorary citizen of Hagen and elected a member of the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. From 1927 Rohlfs lived some of the time in Ascona on Lago Maggiore in Switzerland. The City of Hagen founded the Christian Rohlfs Museum to mark the artist’s 80^th birthday. In 1937 he was defamed as a ‘degenerate’ artist, was prohibited from exhibiting and was excluded from the Preußische Akademie der Künste. 412 of his works were removed from German museum collections. Rohlfs’ wife managed to save several works and take them to Switzerland. In the year of his death commemorative exhibitions were held in Basel, Bern and Zurich.

Through the patronage of Karl Ernst Osthaus Rohlfs did not have to rely on being represented by an art dealer as much as other artists. Alfred Flechtheim and Christian Rohlfs met at the latest through the Sonderbund Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, founded in 1909, for which Flechtheim was the treasurer and provided works by French artists for exhibitions. Rohlfs joined the association in 1909 and took part at its exhibitions in Düsseldorf held in 1909 and 1910. The first sales of works through Flechtheim also date from this time. From 1913 Rohlfs was represented at a number of art dealer’s group exhibitions. In 1919 Flechtheim organised a solo exhibition for the artist to mark his 70^th birthday. Two oil paintings wre acquired by the Düsseldorf municipal art collections. In 1930 Flechtheim wrote an article on Christian Rohlfs for the Berlin magazine ‘Das Tagebuch’ and Rohlfs work was included in ‘Der Querschnitt’ in 1921, 1925 and 1929, each time with an illustration.