FRITZ FUHRKEN (Nadorst, Oldenburg 1894 - 1943 Hesdin)
Fairytale scene, 1923
lithograph/paper, 43 x 30,8 cm
signed Fritz Fuhrken, dated 1923/24, entitled Rauhenstein and dedicated to Carry + Frau Hauser, nummeriert 14/17
foxing and stains

ESTIMATE °€ 100 - 200
STARTING PRICE °€ 100

Fritz Fuhrken attended the Bremen teacher training college from 1909. Fuhrken, who was already interested 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 assigned to go east in November 1915. Until December 1917, he was an infantryman on the Russian front in Galicia and Volhynia. He documented the war in diary entries and sketches. Fuhrken became regimental draughtsman. But he also painted together with 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 Colsterdale/Masham prison camp, a privileged prison camp for officers in Yorkshire. It was there that Fuhrken created watercolours, pen drawings and woodcuts (Colsterdaler Expressionism, proximity to the Blue Rider). He was inspired by well-known artists (Otto Nebel) who were also present in the camp and by German Expressionist art. Nebel was heavily influenced by Franz Marc and Der Blaue Reiter. Further influences by the art teacher Erich Parnitzke and the Bocholt architect Karl Tangerding (1891-1936), from the circle of Rhenish Expressionists. Rainer Stamm categorizes Fuhrken's colour-abstract watercolours as "dynamic Cubo-Futurism". In the 1920s, the palette and the subjects calmed down in accordance with the second generation of Expressionists and the approach to New Objectivity. Other important authors who wrote about Fuhrken are Bernd Kuester, former director of the State Museum for Art and Cultural History in Oldenburg, or Barbara Alms, director of the Municipal Gallery Delmenhorst 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 (piano factory Rud. Ibach Sohn). In October, return to Delmenhorst-Stickgrass. In 1920, first teaching post at the Kleine Allee elementary school, Bremen. Fuhrken became a member of the Bremen Artists' Association, the Northwest German Artists' Association and the Neuwerker artists' group around Willy Menz (1890-1969). In the afternoons, he studied at Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule Bremen in Willy Menz's graphics class. First joint exhibitions of the "Drei" (three; Franz Bronstert, Fuhrken, Woerlen) in Bronstert's homeland. In an advertisement in the Hellweg art magazine in September 1921, only the name "Der Fels" appeared. Two more members were accepted in 1922: Reinhard Hilker (1899-1961), who later became a student of Lyonel Feininger at the Bauhaus, and Carry Hauser (1895-1985), until 1922 in Hals near Passau. Active exhibition activity in Germany and Austria. Self-published by G. Ph. Woerlen in Passau, 7 series of rock portfolios each with a graphic work by the group were published. An 8th episode was published in 1924 by Fritz Fuhrken in W. Krieg Verlag Leipzig. Through Woerlen, 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. The honeymoon led to Georg Phillip Woerlen in Passau. A lifelong friendship developed with Otto Modersohn and Fritz Stuckenberg (1881–1944). With a training recommendation from the director of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Emil Waldmann, Fritz Fuhrken came to the Kassel Art Academy as a student (1925 to 1927). His teachers were Michel, Duellberg, Kay Heinrich Nebel (1888-1953) and Curt Witte (1882-1959), with whom Fuhrken became a master student. After the academic drawing teacher exam, he acquired a teaching post in Bremen. With his students, he brought together an impressive collection of archaeological finds in Bremen, which prompted the director of the Bremen Focke Museum, Ernst Grohne, to publish a publication in 1940. New enthusiasm for Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. Fuhrken's artistic path led via the New Objectivity to an objective pictorial world. In his landscapes, an expressive brush style developed with an almost autonomous effect of the colours. He found his motifs in northern Germany and in everyday things as well as on journeys through Germany, France and Norway. In 1936, he spent painting in the former artists' colony in Doetlingen and in the summer of 1939 in Kloster, on Hiddensee. In 1939, Fuhrken was drafted. Again, he came to Russia, then to France. He created documentary sketches and drawings of the landscape or drawings of war damage. As a member of the 6th Army, Fuhrken witnessed the destruction of his company in Stalingrad in January 1943.

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