A German sculptor, printmaker, and designer, Marcks was educated in the atelier of the sculptor Richard Scheibe. Marcks served in World War I from 1914 to 1915. Upon his return he adopted a more Expressionist style in his work, rendering human figures with a simplified angularity that recalls Gothic sculpture. In 1920 he was appointed to run the ceramics workshop at the Weimar Bauhaus, where his focus was hand-painted pottery. Lyonel Feininger, who ran the Bauhaus printmaking workshop, encouraged him to explore woodcut, a medium Marcks continued to use throughout his career. Marcks resigned when the school moved to Dessau in 1925 believing his style was no longer in keeping with that of the Bauhaus. He took a position teaching pottery at the Halle School of Arts and Crafts and rededicated himself to figurative sculpture. In 1933 the Nazis dismissed Marcks from his teaching post. His work was classified as “degenerate” in 1937 and he barred him from exhibiting.
