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Peter Lipman-Wulf (27 April 1905 – 26 September 1993) was a German-born artist of Jewish decent. Educated at the Berlinische Kunstakademie, Lipman-Wulf fled Berlin in 1933 to escape the developing Third Reich. Working in a semi-abstract style, he was known for his wood, stone, and later bronze sculpture—including his best-selling “Wedding Rings,” an embracing couple carved in rosewood—as well as portrait busts, and copper-print engravings.

Biography   [edit]

Peter Lipman-Wulf was born in 1905 in Berlin, a period marked by the city's rapid flourishing into an industrial and cultural center. His mother, Lucie Sinzheimer, was a well-known portrait-bust artist, and his father, Fritz Lipman-Wulf, a prominent Justizrat (Privy Counsel). Raised in the animated "salon" atmosphere of the Lipman-Wulf home, Peter decided at a very young age to become an artist. After dropping out of school as a teenager, he was accepted into the avant-garde École d'Humanité, a progressive school founded by Paul and Edith Geheb, known as the Odenwaldschule, which centered around a humanistic approach to learning.

At 16, seeking a solid foundation in the craft of wood carving, Peter was accepted for a two-and-a half year apprenticeship in Oberammergau, Germany, a Bavarian town famous for its re-enactments of the Passion Plays. He later completed his art education under the sculptor Ludwig Gies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. While there, he was chosen to assume the position of Master Stone Carver and to succeed Prof. Fritz Diederich as the official State Sculptor of Berlin. In 1933, however, the intolerance of the Hitler era didn't allow this: After being increasingly censured by the rising Nazi regime, Lipman-Wulf was identified as a degenerate artist. Having read Mein Kampf, and denied the right to remain at the Academy, Peter fled to Paris, where he had a studio in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and taught at the Académie Colarossi. He later fled to the South of France, where he was interned in the Camp des Milles, in Aix en Provence (1939-1940). Upon liberation from the camp, he was able to enlist in the French Army, first serving as a soldier, then as a Chasseur Alpin, an elite branch of mountain infantry. In 1942, he escaped to Switzerland with his Swiss wife and infant daughter, where he remained until 1947, at which time he emigrated to the United States.

Death of Parents

Having waited too long to leave Berlin, Lipman-Wulf’s father spent his last years working diligently to assist other Jews in procuring visas to escape. On the eve of their scheduled deportation, Fritz and Lucie committed suicide (28 October 1941), after entrusting their remaining valuables and extensive art collection to Wolfgang Gurlitt. Although Gurlitt reported that the works were bombed out in 1943, there is evidence that some of them survived, having been stored in a house in Bad Aussee, Austria.

Success came early to Lipman-Wulf in pre-Nazi Germany: he won first prize in the 1928 Prussian State competition, and was commissioned by the city of Berlin to create two large-scale marble fountains (one of which still stands today). In 1937, he was awarded the gold medal at the Exposition Mondiale in Paris, for a mid-sized chess set, carved from ebony and ivory. However, as a stateless Jew in exile, having moved to the South of France, he was interned with many other artists and intellectuals, such as Emil Nolde, Max Ernst, and Robert Liebknecht, in the Camp des Milles, a former brick factory in Aix-en-Provence (1939-1940). While interned, Lipman-Wulf made use of the red clay found in the factory, and did complete numerous ceramic sculptures. Some of these were confiscated and appropriated by the camp guards, but others he was able to smuggle out and send to his fiancée, Claire Dietzi, who had them fired in the a nearby village of. To avoid censorship, Lipman-Wulf corresponded with Claire in French during his internment; he published a slim volume containing both the originals and the letters translated into English, along with reproductions of those drawings and works he still had in his possession

Lipman-Wulf died 26 September 1993 in Hamburg, Germany, while awaiting the October opening of a second exhibition in Aix en Provence (he had participated in a group show in late August that dealt with themes from the Camp des Milles as well).