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Arnold Rönnebeck
1885–1947
BirthplaceNassau, Germany
Death placeDenver, Colorado, United States of America
BiographySculptor and printmaker Arnold Rönnebeck incorporated blocky, faceted forms inspired by cubism—the reductive representation of objects in terms of their component planes and angles—into his landscapes, city images, and portraits. Rönnebeck was the son of an architect, and the geometry of built structures became a recurring theme in his two-dimensional artworks. Born in western Germany, he studied architecture at the Royal Art School in Berlin but abandoned it for sculpture, in which he achieved early success. Between 1908 and 1914, Rönnebeck worked in Paris, a pupil of French figural sculptors Aristide Maillol (1861–1944), Emile Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929), and Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). He also maintained a friendship with Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), then pioneering cubist representation in his paintings, drawings, and collages. This new mode of seeing and picturing buildings and other objects deeply influenced Rönnebeck's artistic reaction to New York City, to which he moved in 1923.
Drawing on his earlier training in architectural draftsmanship and on his own photographs of the city, Rönnebeck turned to drawing and lithographic printmaking to capture the dynamic energy and architecture of New York. Through American painter Marsden Hartley, whom he had met at Paris, Rönnebeck was introduced to modernist impresario and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and he exhibited at his gallery known as 291. He had a solo exhibition at New York's Weyhe Gallery in 1925. Rönnebeck's lithographs of New York found favor, but in the late 1920s his attention shifted to the American Southwest, to which he had made several visits as a guest of art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan in the artists' colony of Taos, New Mexico. There he met painter Louise Emerson (1908–1980), and shortly after their marriage in New York in 1926 the couple settled in Denver, Colorado. Rönnebeck served as director of the Denver Art Museum until 1930 and held an appointment as a professor of sculpture at the University of Denver between 1929 and 1935.
Western landscapes and Native American subjects, along with images of sailboats, occupied Rönnebeck in his drawing, printmaking, and watercolor painting from the late 1920s on. In the 1930s and until his death in 1947, he was active as a commercial artist. A number of his color drawings appeared in the magazine Vanity Fair, and he produced designs for posters and other advertising images to promote Colorado tourism. He also made numerous portrait busts, including likenesses of such artistic associates as Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe, and received commissions for relief sculptures for the Denver National Bank, St. John's Cathedral in Denver, and the luxury La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Drawing on his earlier training in architectural draftsmanship and on his own photographs of the city, Rönnebeck turned to drawing and lithographic printmaking to capture the dynamic energy and architecture of New York. Through American painter Marsden Hartley, whom he had met at Paris, Rönnebeck was introduced to modernist impresario and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and he exhibited at his gallery known as 291. He had a solo exhibition at New York's Weyhe Gallery in 1925. Rönnebeck's lithographs of New York found favor, but in the late 1920s his attention shifted to the American Southwest, to which he had made several visits as a guest of art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan in the artists' colony of Taos, New Mexico. There he met painter Louise Emerson (1908–1980), and shortly after their marriage in New York in 1926 the couple settled in Denver, Colorado. Rönnebeck served as director of the Denver Art Museum until 1930 and held an appointment as a professor of sculpture at the University of Denver between 1929 and 1935.
Western landscapes and Native American subjects, along with images of sailboats, occupied Rönnebeck in his drawing, printmaking, and watercolor painting from the late 1920s on. In the 1930s and until his death in 1947, he was active as a commercial artist. A number of his color drawings appeared in the magazine Vanity Fair, and he produced designs for posters and other advertising images to promote Colorado tourism. He also made numerous portrait busts, including likenesses of such artistic associates as Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe, and received commissions for relief sculptures for the Denver National Bank, St. John's Cathedral in Denver, and the luxury La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico.