Christian Rohlfs
Christian Rohlfs (* December 22, 1849 in Groß Niendorf, Segeberg County; † January 8, 1938 in Hagen) was a German painter of the Modern art.
Christian Rohlfs' artistic work reflects several relevant contemporary trends, beginning with the naturalistic-historical academy painting of the 1870s. However, despite his independence, he achieved prominence in the two important styles of his era, first Impressionism and later Expressionism, and thus became the "doyen of German Modern art." With paintings from around 1885 to 1900, he is one of the great German Impressionists; two of his oil paintings were highlights of the representative exhibition in 2009, while his turn to Pointillism in 1902/03 can probably be regarded more as an experiment.
Rather, he subsequently became one of the most important painters of Expressionism and developed it - working together with Emil Nolde for a time - in an independent form from the beginning of the 20th century. After a transitional period characterized by restless searching and personal crises, during which he increasingly turned to figurative and biblical motifs as well as woodcuts and linocuts, he gained the serene serenity that led his mature work of the last two decades to new heights. Color is the most important medium of expression in his paintings, especially in his light-flooded landscapes and floral still lifes, "whose materiality appears as if dissolved by an ethereal veil." Like Nolde, he also increasingly preferred to work on paper, probably for practical reasons and mainly using tempera as paint. This made him an unsurpassed master of expressive flower painting.