Georg Kolbe

Georg Kolbe , 1877-1947, German sculptor. Kolbe studied painting and after meeting Rodin turned to sculpture, working in Berlin from 1903 until his death. He is best known for his impressionist figure studies, many of which are in American museums. During the Nazi regime, Kolbe turned to works of a more aggressive nature, producing idealized figures of warriors and athletes.

Kolbe, Georg (1877–1947). German sculptor, born at Waldheim, Saxony. He trained as a painter in Dresden, Munich, and Paris (at the Académie Julian, 1898), then took up sculpture during a stay in Rome, 1898–1901. From 1903 he lived in Berlin, but in 1909 he revisited Paris, where he met Rodin, who together with Maillol influenced him in turning exclusively to sculpture and in his choice of favourite subject—the nude. Kolbe's early work had vigour and freshness and his lithe figures were often expressive of the dance. In 1929 one such female figure was displayed in the German Pavilion, designed by the great Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, at the Barcelona World Exhibition and it looked completely at home in this exquisite modern setting (by common consent one of the loveliest buildings of the 20th century). However, after the rise of the Nazis (see NATIONAL SOCIALIST ART) Kolbe's work lost its individuality as he turned to evoking the popular image of the ‘master race'. George Heard Hamilton writes: ‘The National Socialists approved of his technique quite as much as of his subjects, and after 1933 Kolbe extolled the virtues of health and joy through increasingly monumental and proportionately stereotyped nudes, scarcely to be distinguished from innumerable others, no more but no less competent, which are so conspicuous a feature of German academic sculpture. None the less such work should not be allowed to conceal the rhythmic invention and technical perfection of his earlier figures.’