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an image of a black and white drawing of a buildingan image of a black and white drawing of a building
Widder Auktionen

Estimate €60 - €100
Sale commission
Description
Fritz Fuhrken (Nadorst, Oldenburg 1894 – 1943 Hesdin) Arcade, 1921 lithograph on paper, 45.5 x 35.6 cm signed ‘Fr Fuhrken’, dated 1921 inscribed ‘Handdruck Lithogr.’, numbered 20/30 ESTIMATE €60 – €100 STARTING PRICE €60 Fritz Fuhrken was a German artist. Fuhrken attended the Bremen teacher training college from 1909. Fuhrken, who had already taken an interest in the youth movement and the Wandervogel at the age of 17 (1911), founded the Stickgraser Wandervogel group “St.W.V. von 1911” and illustrated the logbook with pen-and-ink drawings. First Art Nouveau prints 1913–1915. Fuhrken, a volunteer, was sent to the Eastern Front in November 1915. Until December 1917, he served as an infantryman on the Russian front in Galicia and Volhynia. He documented the war in diary entries and sketches. Fuhrken became the regimental draughtsman. He also painted alongside a master student of Arthur Kampf. In December 1917, Fuhrken was transferred to the Western Front. In August 1918, on the Somme, he was taken prisoner by the British. He spent 15 months at the Colsterdale/Masham prison camp, a privileged camp for officers in Yorkshire. It was there that Fuhrken produced watercolours, pen-and-ink drawings and woodcuts (Colsterdale Expressionism, with affinities to Der Blaue Reiter). He was inspired by well-known artists (such as Otto Nebel) who were also in the camp, and by German Expressionist art. Nebel was heavily influenced by Franz Marc and *Der Blaue Reiter*. Further influences came from the art teacher Erich Parnitzke and the Bocholt architect Karl Tangerding (1891–1936), who belonged to the circle of Rhenish Expressionists. Rainer Stamm classifies Fuhrken’s colour-abstract watercolours as ‘dynamic Cubo-Futurism’. In the 1920s, his palette and subject matter became more subdued, in keeping with the second generation of Expressionists and the New Objectivity movement. Other notable writers on Fuhrken include Bernd Küster, former director of the State Museum of Art and Cultural History in Oldenburg, and Barbara Alms, director of the Delmenhorst Municipal Gallery Haus Coburg. Fuhrken’s early works on paper found their way into the Etta and Otto Stangl collection in Munich via the Wuppertal collector Albert Rudolf Ibach (Rud. Ibach Sohn piano factory). In October, he returned to Delmenhorst-Stickgrass. In 1920, he took up his first teaching post at the Kleine Allee primary school in Bremen. Fuhrken became a member of the Bremen Artists’ Association, the North-West German Artists’ Association and the Neuwerker artists’ group centred around Willy Menz (1890–1969). In the afternoons, he studied at the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule Bremen in Willy Menz’s printmaking class. First joint exhibitions by the “Drei” (the three: Franz Bronstert, Fuhrken, Wörlen) in Bronstert’s home town. In an advertisement in the art magazine *Hellweg* in September 1921, only the name ‘Der Fels’ appeared. Two further members were admitted in 1922: Reinhard Hilker (1899–1961), who later became a student of Lyonel Feininger at the Bauhaus, and Carry Hauser (1895–1985), who had been living in Hals near Passau until 1922. They were actively involved in exhibitions in Germany and Austria. Self-published by G. Ph. Wörlen in Passau, seven series of ‘Fels’ portfolios, each containing a graphic work by the group, were produced. An eighth instalment was published in 1924 by Fritz Fuhrken through W. Krieg Verlag in Leipzig. Through Wörlen, the members of the ‘Fels’ came into contact with Alfred Kubin in Wernstein am Inn. Fritz Fuhrken and Ada Bors (1902–1979) married in 1922. Their honeymoon took them to Georg Phillip Wörlen in Passau. A lifelong friendship developed with Otto Modersohn and Fritz Stuckenberg (1881–1944). With a recommendation from the director of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Emil Waldmann, Fritz Fuhrken enrolled as a student at the Kassel Art Academy (1925 to 1927). His teachers were Michel, Düllberg, Kay Heinrich Nebel (1888–1953) and Curt Witte (1882–1959), under whom Fuhrken went on to become a master student. After passing his academic drawing teacher’s examination, he took up a teaching post in Bremen. Together with his students, he assembled an impressive collection of archaeological finds in Bremen, which prompted the director of the Focke Museum in Bremen, Ernst Grohne, to publish a catalogue in 1940. A renewed enthusiasm for Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. Fuhrken’s artistic journey led via New Objectivity to an objective pictorial world. In his landscapes, an expressive brushstroke developed, with the colours taking on an almost autonomous quality. He found his subjects in northern Germany and in everyday objects, as well as on journeys through Germany, France and Norway. In 1936, he spent time painting in the former artists’ colony in Dötlingen and, in the summer of 1939, in Kloster on Hiddensee. In 1939, Fuhrken was called up. He was sent to Russia once more, and then to France. He produced documentary sketches and drawings of the landscape, as well as drawings depicting war damage. As a member of the 6th Army, Fuhrken witnessed the destruction of his company at Stalingrad in January 1943. Other artists and styles: Emil Waldmann, Georg Philipp Wörlen, Erich Parnitzke, Karl Tangerding, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Colsterdale Expressionism, The Rock, Bremen Artists’ Association, New Objectivity, Cubo-Futurism, Expressionism, Wandervogel, Kassel Art Academy, Oldenburg, Delmenhorst, Hiddensee, Walther Klemm, Berlin Secession, Weimar Academy, North German Landscape Painting, Oldenburg School of Applied Arts PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price comprises the highest bid plus the buyer’s premium, VAT and, where applicable, the artists’ resale rights fee and platform fee. In the case of standard taxation (marked °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The statutory sales tax of 13 per cent (20 per cent for photographs) is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer’s premium and the platform fee. The buyer’s premium amounts to 28 per cent in the case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.
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About the sale Modern Art
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Auction time 09/30/2026 at 10:00 AM
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