Karl Storck (1826–1887) was a Hessian-born Romanian sculptor and art theorist, the most prominent Romanian sculptor of his time.[1][2] His sons Carol Storck (1854–1926) and Frederic Storck (1872–1924), were also noted artists.
Biography
Karl Storck was born on in Hanau, Grand Duchy of Hesse.[3] Having been trained and working for a time as an engraver, he became sculptor only later.[3]
In 1847, probably under pressure of economic upheaval amidst the events leading to the impending Revolution of 1848 in nearby Prussia,[4] he traveled to Paris to study[4] only to be driven from Paris by the French Revolution of 1848.[3][4] after a brief return to Hanau,[4] in 1849 Josef Flesh, also originally from Hanau offered him a job as in Bucharest (then part of the Ottoman Empire) as an engraver in Flesh's jewelry business.[5] Two years later, he took a different position in Bucharest with Georg Fles, originally from Hamburg-Altona. Soon becoming an associate in Fles's firm, he created several sculptures in gypsum for the Military Hospital in Bucharest.[5]
On April 23, 1852, he married Anna Clara Ihm (1852-1864), also originally from Hanau.[5] They would have four children, only one of whom lived into adulthood: the sculptor Carol Storck, born in 1854 and originally named Johann Ludwig Karl Storck.[5] That same year co-founded a German-oriented cultural society in Bucharest,[5] and designed and executed two akroteria for the faç of the National Theatre; the theater was damaged beyond repair in the Luftwaffe bombardment of Bucharest on August 24, 1944 (see Bombing of Bucharest in World War II),[6][7] but the akroteria survive in the collection of the Frederic and Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck Art Museum[5] ("the Storck Museum").
Encountering another round of political turmoil in Bucharest after the end of the Crimean War,[8] he and his family spent the years 1856–1857 in Vienna and in Munich where he trained as sculptor[3][8] under Maximilian Wildmann and became a member of Munich's Association of Artists.[9] However, he saw his economic prospects as being better in Bucharest.[5]
With the 1859 unification of Moldavia and Wallachia, Bucharest became the ambitious capital of a new country, Romania, presenting opportunities for an ambitious sculptor.[8] Storck established an atelier at Strada Fântânii 4 (now Strada Gen. Berthlot).[5] He worked in a wide variety of sculptural media, ranging from wood to marble.[5] Besides creating a variety of sculptural elements for several churches,[8] Storck designed and, with his team (most notably, Paul Focșeneanu [ro][5]), sculpted the pediment for the main building of the University of Bucharest (1862),[8][5] damaged beyond repair in the Allied air strikes of April 4, 1944, during World War II.[10] That same year, he also participated in the decoration of Suțu Palace [ro] (now the Bucharest Municipal Museum [ro]) including a medallion portrait of Irinei Suțu.[5]
Storck's wife Anna died April 6, 1864.[5] Around that same time, he formed a connection to Italian sculptor Ippolito Lepri, providing him access to Carrara marble, his favored material for major works from that time forward.[5] In 1865 he became the first professor of sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy in Bucharest.[11][12][13]
Now at the heart of Romania's arts establishment, Storck was one of the organizers of what became the young country's first periodic art exhibition.[14] He also obtained for the Fine Arts Academy a collection of casts of famous sculptures from Paris, so that his Romanian students could study these examples.[14] And he remarried, this time to his children's governess, Friederike Ameliie Olescher (1843-1915). Over the course of 20 years, they would have nine children, two of whom died as infants.[14] The most notable of the seven who survived was Frederic Storck (1872-1942), who would go on to be one of the leading Romanian sculptors of the first half of the 20th century, and who would marry Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck, a prominent artist who became Europe's first female art professor.
In 1866, after a brief period of political turbulence, Romania became a kingdom under the Hohenzollern monarch Carol I. Storck's career continued apace. He moved his atelier to a larger space on what is now Calea Victoriei.[14] (His previous studio had been only a few meters off of that major street.) The following year he received a commission for a maquette of the Curtea de Argeș Cathedral.[14] Originally designed for the Paris Exposition of 1867,[14] it can be seen in the Storck Museum.[15] Also for that Exposition, he sculpted portraits in salt of Napoleon III and Carol I.[14]
Liliana Vârban; Ionel Ioniță; Dan Vasiliu (2006). Catalogul operelor de artă ale artiștilor din familia Storck aflate în Muzeul Frederic Storck și Cecilia Cuțescu Storck - Sculptorii Storck - Sculptură - plachete și medalii - grafică - pictură (in Romanian). Bucharest: Editura Muzeului Municipiului București, București. ISBN9738745039.
External links
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