MARGARETE SCHEEL

MARGARETE SCHEEL (German, 1881- 1961)
„Mutter mit Kind“ (Mother with child)
54cm X 14cm. Carving, oak wood.

Scheel was resident at Rostock. She was student of Arthur Lewin-Funcke (1905) and Aristide Maillol (1910/11).

Margarete Scheel was born in 1881 in Rostock. In 1903 she moved to Berlin
where she started to study arts and crafts and took lessons in drawing at the classes of Hans Baluschek and Lovis Corinth. She continued her studies at the studio of the sculptor Arthur Lewin-Funcke. With the money out of first public assignments (reliefs
for of the Mecklenburgische Hypotheken and  Wechselbank), she moved to Paris to become student of Aristide Maillol. She stayed there from 1910 to 1911. After returning to Berlin, Scheel became member of and exhibited at the „Freie Sezession“. Later on she took part in the „Kölner Werkbundausstellung“. In 1914 she moved to Rome and had her own sculptor studio. Besides the sculpting, she became interested in pottery. After returnining she opened a pottery studio in Rostock in 1920. She became member of the „Vereinigung Rostocker Künstler“ and gained orders mainly for architectural sculptures. During the Nazi regime, the 1910 created reliefs of her of the Hypotheken and  Wechselbank were removed from the building and destroyed. Scheel withdrew from the public art scene and worked now on small plastics, portrait busts  and kitchen ware. Her studio was destroyed in a 1942 British bombing.

After the war, she continued to work as sculptor and potter. Margarete Scheel died 1969 in Rostock.

Lit.: Gehrig, Dr. Oscar: Die Bildhauerin Margarete Scheel,
Mecklenburgische Monatshefte 1, 1925.