Bernhard Hoetger

Apart from these sculptures, which turn Symbolist from 1905 onwards, Hoetger also created numerous watercolours and drawings. In 1906 Hoetger made friends with Paula Modersohn-Becker and became her mentor. In 1911, the artist was given a professorship at the Mathildenhöhe artists' colony in Darmstadt. From 1915 Hoetger built up an expressive oeuvre of sculptures while also working as an architect and designer of home furnishings. From 1916 to 1929 he lived in Worpswede, where he ran his own studio at the Worpsweder Kunsthütten. This period was followed by two years in Bremen, where he received numerous commissions from the manufacturer Hermann Bahlsen and from his sponsor Ludwig Roselius, creating, for instance, the artwork in Böttcherstrasse in Bremen. Hoetger's oeuvre was declared “degenerate” by the Nazis, and he left Germany for a short while in 1936, but then moved back to Berlin in 1938 where his studio was destroyed in 1943.