Erich Wolfsfeld was born into a Jewish family in Krajenka, Germany (now Poland) in 1885 and studied at the Berlin Academy, as well as in Paris and Rome, prior to teaching painting and etching in various Berlin art schools until dismissed from his posts by the Nazi regime in 1936. Immigrating to England in 1939, following internment on the Isle of Man, he settled in Sheffield and London; a widely travelled, classic painter-etcher, Wolfsfeld mostly painted portraits and animals. Stylistically unfashionable in postwar Britain, he fell into relative obscurity, despite showing regularly at the Ben Uri Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts, London; however, a number of posthumous exhibitions have marked a rise in his reputation.
Painter, graphic artist and academic, Erich Wolfsfeld was born into a Jewish family in Krajenka, Germany (now Poland) in 1885, and moved to Berlin aged two, where he grew up. He studied at the Berlin Academy (where he admired the artists Adolf von Menzel and Wilhelm Leibl), at the Academie Julien in Paris, and in 1907 worked in Rome. In 1905 he was commissioned by the Prussian government to make etched copies of Byzantine frescoes in the classical ruins of Priene (later lost) for an unrealised publication and in 1911 he won the Kaiser Wilhelm Gold Medal for painting. By 1914 Wolfsfeld had exhibited in Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna, while illustrated articles about his work had appeared in journals including Die Kunst and Kunst für Alle. However, his early success was interrupted by the First World War, during which he served as an officer in the German army. From 1920 he worked as a professor of painting and etching at Berlin’s Royal Academy School, where he mentored, among others, the painter Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993). He also taught at the United States Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Wolfsfeld also travelled widely in North Africa and the Middle East, frequently depicting Arab subjects. In 1935 he married the Jewish dancer Ilse Fackenheim (later Illa Walter). Following the rise of Nazism, Wolfsfeld was dismissed from his teaching post in 1936 due to his Jewish origins. Fackenheim managed to obtain a domestic visa and subsequently immigrated to England, where she worked in the home of a professor in Sheffield.
Wolfsfeld, however, chose to remain in Germany, while his wife in exile managed to show some of his paintings at Sheffield University, who in turn contacted the director of the Sheffield museum. This resulted in Wolfsfeld obtaining a distinguished person’s visa in 1939, as part of a cultural quota, allowing some German Jews into Britain. He initially settled in London and in late August 1939 Sheffield’s Graves Art Gallery opened his solo exhibition; however, two days later the Second World War was declared and the show was cancelled. In June 1940, Wolfsfeld was interned as a so called ‘enemy alien’ on the Isle of Man; after his release, he lived in Sheffield briefly before relocating to London. A classic painter-etcher and gifted draughtsman, Wolfsfeld mostly concentrated on portraiture, also creating character studies; he also frequently depicted animals, often inspired by his travels: ‘I like all picturesque creatures, from donkeys to human beings – just in that order’, he later said (Rosenberg 1956, p. 5). Wolfsfeld preferred simple, even humble subjects, especially the Polish 'shtetl' Jews before and during the First World War, or poor Arabs in North Africa. He portrayed them in a dignified manner and ‘almost motionless like the proud statues of antiquity, evoking the canvasses of the brothers Le Nain, the French painters of the seventeenth century’ (Rosenberg 1977, p. 8).
Wolfsfeld did not sympathise with any form of modernism and ‘believed, one could say, with almost fanatical obstinacy, in the visible and touchable world. Abstraction meant nothing to him. Man and his natural surroundings were the field of his art’ (Rosenberg 1958, p. 9). His work was therefore considered stylistically unfashionable in postwar Britain, and he subsequently fell into relative obscurity to the point of being excluded from the survey show of 1985 at the Royal Academy of Arts, German Art in the 20th Century. Wolfsfeld did however participate in mixed exhibitions at Ben Uri from 1950 onwards and held a solo show at the Museum of Derby in 1953. Wolfsfeld was also an associate member of the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers, exhibiting frequently in its shows, as well as with the Royal Academy of Arts.
Erich Wolfsfeld died in London, England on 13 April 1956. A memorial exhibition was held at Ben Uri in 1958, which featured, among other works, an oil on paper representing the twilight scene from Gerhart Hauptmann's ‘Gabriel Borkmann’, which ‘beautifully renders the gloomy and oppressive atmosphere’, (Rosenberg 1958, p. 9). Other posthumous exhibitions included two at London's Belgrave Gallery in 1977 and 1979 (which also published a catalogue raisonée of Wolfsfeld’s etchings in 1979), while a show celebrating the art of Wolfsfeld and two of his Berlin pupils, Lotte Laserstein and Gottfried Meyer, was held at Agnew’s Gallery in 1991. More recently, his work featured in Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain (Ben Uri and touring, 2009-10) and Refugees: The Lives of Others - German Refugee Artists to the UK (2017, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum). Wolfsfeld’s work is held in UK public collections, including the British Museum, Imperial War Museum, and the V&A in London and the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, among others. Internationally, his work is represented in the collections of the Germanisches National Museum in Nuremberg, Albertina in Vienna, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, among others.
Erich Wolfsfeld in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Erich Wolfsfeld]
Publications related to [Erich Wolfsfeld] in the Ben Uri Library