Max Olderock: Konstruktion (1958)

Woodcut with handcoloured areas.
 
Woodcut and water colour
28 x 23 cm 
 
Handsigned and dated in pencil
 
Max Olderock (1895 - 1972) studied painting and weaving at the Lerchenfeld School of Applied Arts in Hamburg from 1910 to 1914 and from 1918 to 1923 after completing his apprenticeship as a painter. The reason for interrupting his studies was World War I, where Oderock served as a soldier. In the 1920s he designed costumes for the avant-garde expressionist theater "Die Kampfbühne" in Hamburg. He worked as a freelance artist and created paintings, tapestries and murals. From 1927 he was a member of the Deutscher Werkbund and had connections to the Bauhaus. He exhibited his art at Herwath Walden in the Sturm Gallery and was a teacher at the State Technical College in Hamburg. During World War II his art is declared "degenerate" and disappears from the public eye. Olderock only made carpet paintings during this period and served in the war from 1940 to 1945. It was not until the mid-1950s that Olderock got back to his art and turned to constructive painting. He showed his works in the Kunsthalle and the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg, in Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin and in the Staatliche Galerie Dessau. Paintings by Olderock are now in the Kunsthalle in Bern, among other places.