Christian Rohlfs

Rohlfs is growing up in Fredesdorf in Germany and comes more by accident to the painting, when he falls at the age of 15 years by climbing a tree, injured himself severely at the leg and told him by his doctor Dr. Ernst Stolle against the boredom will give footage. Stolle recognizes Rohlf's talent, begins to promote him and recommends him further, so that he receives an exemption at the Grand Ducal School of Art in Weimar with Paul Thumann. In 1873 his leg had to be amputated for chronic inflammation of the bone marrow, but a year later he began to study again. In 1886, during his several months' stay on the estate of Hoof near Kassel, a few portraits of the family Heydenreich and views of the Rittergut were created. In 1901, Rohlfs took up an apprenticeship at the Folkwangschule in Hagen and spent several years working in Soest, whose medieval churches and buildings he represented in his paintings until the 1920s. As one of the most remarkable German painters of Expressionism, he developed an independent style in which the expressive colors are of great importance. In 1910 he was elected to the jury of the Deutscher Künstlerbundes. One year before his death, his art was classified as "degenerate" by the Nazis and numerous works confiscated. At the documenta I in 1955 his works are exhibited posthumously.