WOLFF-MALM, ERNST (1885-1940)

"Tempest" (c.1920)
etching
cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Wolff-Malm was a prominent German Modernist & Printmaker. He studied at the Grand Ducal Baden Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe with the landscape painter Gustav Schönleber and the animal and landscape painter Julius Bergmann. After completing his studies, he spent 1912 to 1914 on a scholarship in Rome. There he was influenced by Arnold Böcklin and Hans von Marées. From 1912 to 1913 he created a fresco on the inner front wall of the swimming pool of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Bad in Wiesbaden. From 1936 Wolff-Malm adapted his work to the guidelines of the National Socialist conception of art. At the autumn exhibition of the Hesse-Nassau district in Frankfurt's Römer in 1936, his painting "Mädchen im Heu" was described by critics as the highlight of the exhibition. The painting "Penthesilea" was bought by Hitler in 1938 at the Great German Art Exhibition in the Haus der Kunst in Munich.
This stunning original etching reminds me of Gericault's iconic "Raft Of The Medusa.