Arnold Topp

Arnold Topp was born in 1887; his exact birth date and place of birth are not confirmed in available sources, though his early schooling took place in Soest, Westphalia, Germany. He trained first as a schoolteacher, attending the Evangelische Gesamtschule and the Stadtische Rektoratsschule in Soest, then the Praparandenanstalt in Soest until 1904, and completing the Konigliches evangelisches Lehrerseminar in Soest in 1908. He then sought specialized training as a drawing teacher, studying from October 1909 to July 1911 at the Staatliches Zeichenlehrerseminar of the Kunstgewerbeschule Dusseldorf under Lothar von Kunowski.

His paintings, colorful and cubist in structure, first drew attention at Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm gallery in Berlin starting in 1915, and he became part of Walden's circle of avant-garde artists. During the Weimar Republic his work continued to appear at Der Sturm and in further exhibitions, and he co-founded the Arbeitsrat fur Kunst (Workers' Council for Art) in Berlin. He continued working as a schoolteacher throughout this period, a role that supported him financially alongside his art.

In 1937 the National Socialist regime declared Topp a "degenerate" artist and included his work in the Entartete Kunst exhibition. He disappeared in 1945, reportedly after being posted as a teacher further east to a town now in Poland, and is believed to have died in the final weeks of the Second World War, though no independently documented death date or place of death has been located. His son later petitioned a German court for a legal declaration of death, and the Amtsgericht Soest ruled in 1961 that Topp's death would be legally fixed as of December 31, 1945. His work was rarely exhibited for decades afterward and has drawn renewed museum and market attention since the 1980s.

Topp's standing rests primarily on his place within Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm circle. Auction-house cataloguing situates Der Sturm's Berlin gallery as one of early twentieth century Europe's most important centers for modern art, and describes Walden as a champion of the artists he exhibited and published. Topp's inclusion in the 1937 Entartete Kunst exhibition marks him, in retrospect, as one of the modernists targeted by the Nazi regime. Since the 1980s, dealers and museums have described renewed interest in his cubist landscapes and figures, though detailed critical literature specific to Topp himself remains sparse in the public record.

Topp's auction market is thin but includes one well documented high point: Die Sonne ist gross und gefallen sold at Christie's London on March 1, 2017, for GBP 509,000 (about USD 628,309), the highest price publicly recorded for the artist. A more typical result is Malven (1923), which sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne for EUR 52,920 including premium, reported elsewhere as about USD 57,300; the exact sale date for that lot is not stated in publicly accessible sources. Other recorded results, such as Weltenkreisen, have sold well below both figures.

Public sources disagree on basic facts about Topp, including his year of death, which some market databases list as 1960 or 1961 rather than the legally fixed 1945 date established by a German court; the court record, tied to a specific judicial decision, is the more authoritative source. No catalogue raisonne exists, no current gallery or estate representation could be confirmed, and the auction record rests on a small number of sales, most prominently the 2017 Christie's sale of Die Sonne ist gross und gefallen. Collectors should treat any single price point or biographical claim about Topp with care and confirm it against primary auction house records or museum documentation before relying on it.