Emy Roeder

Emy Roeder (30 January 1890 – 7 February 1971) was a modern German sculptor born in Würzburg, Germany. In 1937 her work was labeled Degenerate art by the Nazis. She received the Villa Romana prize in 1936, and was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for her life work in 1960. She died, aged 81, in Mainz.

Biography In her late teens from 1908 to 1910 she began to study both drawing and sculpture which led her to further her studies and attend Kunstakademie in Munich, Germany. Unlike the prior, this experience she found “enriching”. This led to the public denouncement of Roeder's work in 1937 as her sculpture Pregnant Woman was confiscated by the Nazis and included in the famous exhibition “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art) located in Munich, Germany. The designation of Degenerate by the Nazis banned her from exhibiting her work in Germany. Later in 1944 while Florence was occupied by the Allied forces she was identified as an enemy alien and therefore was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Padula. Here she oversaw the women's bath house, lucky for her she was given the freedom to draw resulting in many sketches of the inmates and their physical movement within the showers. After her release she went back to Rome where she created a series of bronze relief sculptures using the sketches she had made inside the Padula camp. In 1949 her application for Italian citizenship was denied and Roeder returned to Germany. Here she taught in the Landeskunstschule and became renewed by a vast amount of recognition in her homeland with many exhibitions, prizes, and medals. Including her participation in the first documenta exhibition in Kassel in 1955 After years of imprisonment and neglect she was finally able to revitalize her creativity one last time before her death on February 7, 1971. thumb

Principal works 1914 – Bust of a Girl, artificial stone, destroyed. 1918 – Portrait of Herbert Garbe, artificial stone, destroyed. 1919 – Pregnant Woman, terracotta, location unknown. 1920 – Family, destroyed. 1920 – Creche Relief, wood, Courtesy The Robert Gore Rifkind Collection, Beverly Hills, California. 1939 – Bather, terracotta, destroyed. 1946 – Padula I, bronze relief, Courtesy Städtische Galerie, Würzburg. 1964 – Self-Portrait, bronze, Courtesy Städtische Galerie, Würzburg.