Ludwig Oswald Wenckebach (1895-1962), born in 1895 in Heerlen, began his apprenticeship with his uncle, the painter Willem Wenckebach, in 1910. He then continued his education at the Traditional Arts School in Haarlem. In 1914, he traveled to Vienna to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Wenckebach was not only a painter, but also skilled in woodcuts, etchings, and lithographs. He returned to the Netherlands in 1919 and settled in Schagen. It was there that he met sculptor John Rädecker, who encouraged him to start sculpting. However, he did not completely abandon graphic art, as evidenced by his 3-cent stamp released in 1928 to commemorate the Amsterdam Olympic Games.
As a sculptor, Wenckebach was self-taught. Initially, influenced by his time in Greece, he worked in the classical Greek tradition. He created sculptures for buildings and monuments, as well as portraits in stone and bronze. In 1935, he was appointed as an extraordinary professor of modeling and sculpting at the department of Architecture at the Technical University of Delft. After World War II, Wenckebach created several war monuments (in Alphen 1949, Haarlem 1949, and Middelburg 1950). He also designed coins and medals, such as the 1950 coin featuring the portrait of Queen Juliana.
It was not until the 1950s that Wenckebach gradually developed his own figurative style, breaking away from the classicist tradition with its heroic, athletic, or archaic figures. He employed a subtle method of stylization, while still maintaining a certain strictness in his figures. Slowly, his free figurative sculptures gained their own character, featuring a sleek and stylized design with a gentle, everyday, and sometimes ironic, tone.
In 1955, Oswald Wenckebach was appointed Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion. He passed away in Noordwijkerhout in 1962.
www.ftn-books.com has the Hefting book on Wenckebach now available.
