€1,000 - €2,000
WALTER VON RUCKTESCHELL
(Saint Petersburg 1882 - 1941 Messina)
Family, 1925
wood, 43 x 46.4 x 28 cm
label catalogue raisonné, Ruckteschell, Inv. No. 213, label Kuenstlerhaus 3581
provenance: Auction house Neumeister Munich 2009, international private collection
ESTIMATE °€ 1.000 - 2.000
STARTING PRICE °€ 1.000
Walter Alexander Moritz von Ruckteschell was a German illustrator, sculptor and author; son of Pastor Nicolai von Ruckteschell and Baroness Catherina Helene von Engelhardt. He was married to the Swiss artisan, ceramist, and sculptor Clara von Ruckteschell-Truëb, born Clara Truëb, also called Clary von Ruckteschell-Truëb. Ruckteschell enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1908 with Angelo Jank for drawing, but then transferred to the Debschitz School to train in arts and crafts. In 1913, the Ruckteschell couple traveled to German East Africa with the Swiss painter Carl von Salis, a friend of Ruckteschell's studies, and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, among other places. Clara von Ruckteschell-Truëb was the first woman to climb Kilimanjaro. At the beginning of World War I, Ruckteschell volunteered for the Schutztruppe and became adjutant to Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. In the 1920s, the Ruckteschell couple lived in Dachau, where both were active as painters, sculptors, and with wood and ceramic works. They were friends with the ethnologist Leo Frobenius, who met his later assistant Hans Rhotert at a party in Ruckteschell's house in 1924. At a 1924 exhibition in New York, Ruckteschell met Louise Herrick Wall, a former associate of Woodrow Wilson's who supported European artists in need. Wall subsequently wrote a positive article about Ruckteschell in "Opportunity" (the magazine of the Harlem Renaissance movement), to which she attached a picture of Ruckteschell, the female portrait Fatuma from the "Lettow Portfolio. Opportunity" editor Charles S. Johnson brought Ruckteschell to the attention of Alain LeRoy Locke. Whether Locke came in contact with him personally is not clear, however Locke adopted a drawing by Ruckteschell (Hassan Bilal) for his pivotal work "The New Negro" and mentioned him in praise in his essay "The Legacy of Ancestral Arts." In 1927, Ruckteschell organized the Dachau Trade Show and subsequently the Dachau Artists' Association. In 1934, Ruckteschell created the fountain sculpture of St. Francis for the spa fountain in Rheinfelden, and Alexander Zschokke created the second fountain sculpture of St. Magdalena. In 1933, Ruckteschell took over the leadership of the Munich Artists' Cooperative. In 1935 he had to give up the leadership because he refused to take down works classified as "degenerate" at the exhibition of Munich artists in Berlin and Berlin artists in Munich. Paul Rosner became the new president. Ruckteschell, a proponent of German colonialism, was the creator of the controversial "Deutsch-Ostafrika-Ehrenmal" (1938) at the entrance to the Lettow-Vorbeck barracks in Hamburg-Jenfeld.
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The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographys 20%, is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium.
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