ArtistGerman
Erich Wolfsfeld
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Erich Wolfsfeld was born in 1884 in Krojanke, a small Prussian town that is now Krajenka in northwestern Poland, into a Jewish family. When he was two years old the family moved to Berlin, and the city would define the first and most productive phase of his career. He enrolled at the Berlin Academy in 1902, where he studied until 1913 under instructors including Konrad Bose, a direct student of Adolph Menzel. He also spent time at the Academie Julian in Paris under Jules Lefebvre, and learned etching in the studio of Hans Meyer. The combination gave him an unusually rigorous technical base across both painting and printmaking.
In 1905, while still a student, he was commissioned by the Prussian government to make etched copies of Byzantine frescoes in the ruins of Priene in Turkey. The journey was a revelation. The light, the faces and the daily life of the Ottoman world opened a vein that would run through his work for decades. In 1910, his etching 'Die Bogenschutzen' (The Archers) won the Kaiser Wilhelm Gold Medal - one of the highest academic distinctions available to a German artist at the time. He served in the German Army during World War I, and in 1920 was appointed Professor of Painting and Etching at the Berlin Academy, a position that placed him at the centre of German academic art life through the 1920s and into the early 1930s.
During the interwar years Wolfsfeld used his summer holidays to travel extensively in Morocco, Egypt, Palestine and Turkey. He carried rolls of treated paper and worked directly from life, recording figures in markets, caravans at rest and street scenes in Marrakech. He also worked up subjects later in the studio using sketches and photographs. These oriental scenes - rendered with the confident draughtsmanship of a trained academician but animated by direct observation - became the works for which he is best known. In 1928 he made a trip through Egypt and Palestine that moved him deeply, resulting in a published account of the journey titled 'Eindrucke von einer Orientreise'. His subjects in this period include Abraham's sacrifice, biblical scenes, snake charmers in Marrakech, and sensitive portraits of Arab men and women.
Among the students who passed through his atelier at the Berlin Academy was Lotte Laserstein, who studied there from 1921 to 1927 and became his Meisterschulerin - star pupil - in her final two years. Laserstein later credited Wolfsfeld with giving her access to the German realist tradition through Menzel and Wilhelm Leibl, and the intensity of his instruction shaped her commitment to figurative realism throughout her life.
In 1935 or 1936, Nazi antisemitic legislation ended his professorship. He remained in Germany until 1939, when he and his wife emigrated to Britain. He was initially interned as an Enemy Alien on the Isle of Wight before being released and settling in London. Just before the war, an exhibition of his work at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield led to portrait commissions in Britain. His portrait of the sculptor Sir Goscombe John entered the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. He participated in mixed exhibitions at the Ben Uri Gallery from 1950 and held a solo show at the Derby Museum in 1953. A memorial exhibition was held at Ben Uri in 1958, two years after his death in London.
At the Auctionist platform, Wolfsfeld is represented by 11 items, all passing through Bukowskis Stockholm (10 lots) and Stockholms Auktionsverk Dusseldorf/Neuss (1 lot). The lots are predominantly etchings and prints, which aligns with the broad spread of his graphic work from the Berlin years. Subjects include biblical scenes, portraits, caravans and figures from North Africa. The highest recorded sale is 1,605 SEK for 'Portratt av en man', a single etching, reflecting his current status as a specialist-interest name rather than a broadly traded one on the Nordic market.