The big bear

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The Big Bear is the title of an artists' association that was founded in Ascona , Switzerland in 1924 . The seven members were from the United States , Germany , the Netherlands , Russia, and Switzerland. After Otto Niemeyer-Holstein no longer took part in the association's exhibitions in 1933, Richard Seewald took his place .

Naming

In 1924, in Ascona on Lake Maggiore, Switzerland, seven painters formed an artists' association. It was named after the Great Bear , the most famous constellation in the night sky. The driving force was probably the bustling Russian painter Marianne von Werefkin . She was the oldest in the group of colleagues and had a lot of experience in founding associations. It is no coincidence that the Big Bear was founded in the same year that the artist group Die Blaue Vier was founded. Werefkin's connections to their artists Lyonel Feininger , Alexej Jawlensky , Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were too diverse . Internationality characterized the composition of the members of both associations. In addition, both of them conspicuously decided to give their names a certain number of members, which they never exceeded. The Blue Four did this very factually. The name The Great Bear initially seems to refer only neutrally to the seven stars in the European night sky. However, the seven contains an ambiguous number symbolism that Werefkin used not just once.

prehistory

As early as 1897, Werefkin had gathered artists around her in the Schwabing district of her adopted home in Munich , who understood themselves in the tradition of the Lukas guilds. In a treatise, Werefkin described a circle of like-minded people and gave an insight into their basic understanding of artists' associations: “Our brotherhood of Saint Luke, that is the union of some generous, feeling, thinking and loving people. Art united us, we got to know, appreciate and love each other. Art, friendship and sympathy for everything that is beautiful, good and noble, that is our watchword. ”   At that time, painters such as Anton Ažbe , Igor Grabar , Alexej Jawlensky , Wassily Kandinsky , Dmitry Kardowsky (1866–1943 ) met in their“ pink salon ” ) and many other important artists. 

Gustav Pauli , former museum director in Bremen and Hamburg, reported on the meetings at Werefkin: “Here [...] one exhausted oneself in discussing difficult basic problems of all design or planned manifestations, that is, exhibitions. […] In this world […] the Werefkin's salon was a focal point […] I have never again met a society that was charged with such tensions. The center, to a certain extent the transmission point of the almost physically perceptible waves of forces, was the baroness [Werefkin]. The gracefully built woman [...] not only dominated the conversation, but also everything around her. [...] All questions of art and literature, old and new, were debated with unprecedented zeal and just as much spirit. " 

The resolution to set up a New Munich Artists' Association (NKVM), from which the Der Blaue Reiter editorial team was to emerge in 1911 , goes back to an idea that was born in Werefkin's Salon at Christmas time in 1908. Besides Werefkin, Jawlensky, Adolf Erbslöh and Oscar Wittenstein (1880–1918) also involved. It was not until the beginning of 1909 that Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, among others, joined them, and in the following years Franz Marc and many other artists and scientists joined them.

Werefkin was at least involved in the formulation of the text of the founding circular of the NKVM, which was published in the spring of 1909. This emerges from a letter she wrote in 1912 to Richart Reiche , the director of the Kunstverein Barmen and co-initiator of the legendary Cologne Sonderbund exhibition of 1912: “We had announced it to the world in noble words that we had joined forces because of artistic convictions had, far from any virtuosity, only appreciating the soul of art, reaching out to everyone who took this path. " 

The members of the Great Bear

Ernst Frick

Ernst Frick was a Swiss painter and sculptor who had learned to be a metal caster. Artistically, he initially trained himself as an autodidact. In his youth he was an anarchist activist. As a trade unionist, he edited the magazine “Weckruf” in 1905 and met the anarchists and bohemians Erich Mühsam and Johannes Nohl during a spa stay in Ascona in 1906 . In 1910, Frick came into contact with the painter Richard Seewald for the first time in Ascona . In 1920 he took painting lessons from the Romanian-German painter Arthur Segal in Ascona . In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Great Bear and preferably exhibited with this artists' association. In 1937 he moved into a house on Monte Verità , Ascona's local mountain.

Walter Helbig

Walter Helbig was a German-Swiss painter and wood cutter. From 1894 he studied at the Art Academy in Dresden with Carl Bantzer and Otto Gussmann . 1906–1910 he worked as a freelance painter in Hamburg. Helbig lived in Switzerland from 1910. During the winter he worked in Berlin and kept in touch with German colleagues. On April 22, 1911, he declared his membership in the Neue Sezession Berlin , whose co-founder was Arthur Segal, who was to become Ernst Frick's teacher in 1920. In 1911 Helbig founded the artist group Der Moderne Bund together with Hans Arp and Oscar Lüthy in Weggis, Switzerland . This was active until 1914, exhibited in Lucerne and Zurich, among others. Since 1911 he has presented himself repeatedly in the Munich gallery Hans Goltz and in the Berlin gallery Der Sturm von Herwarth Walden , which gave Helbig early opportunities to contact Werefkin. In any case, the acquaintance between Helbig and Werefkin from 1913 onwards is proven by a letter that Dr. Richart Reiche (1876–1943), then head of the Kunstverein in Barmen , addressed Werefkin from the Hotel Marienbad in Munich. They exhibited repeatedly before the First World War, for example at the fourth exhibition of the New Secession Berlin , which took place from November 18, 1911 to January 31, 1912. Werefkin was represented at this exhibition together with ten other members of the NKVM, which at the beginning of the exhibition also included Kandinsky, Marc and Münter. Interestingly, they exhibited at the time with representatives of the artist group Die Brücke . With the entry of the Brücke painter  Cuno Amiet into the association Der Moderne Bund, a connection between Helbig and Werefkin was once again strengthened. As early as 1909, Amiet visited   Werefkin and Jawlensky “often” in Munich and became one of her best Swiss artist friends alongside Klee and his wife Lily (1876–1946). In 1913 he exhibited at the First German Autumn Salon in Berlin, where Werefkin, Gordon Mallet McCouch, Otto van Rees and Richard Seewald were also represented. In 1918 Helbig became a member of the socially oriented Berlin November group . In 1924 he moved to Ascona and became one of the founders of the Great Bear . In 1938 he acquired Ascona's citizenship.

Albert Kohler

Albert Kohler was a Swiss painter. He began his artistic career in 1902 at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with the history painter Johann Caspar Herterich . He then studied with Franz von Stuck . It has not yet been researched when Kohler could have had contact with Werefkin before his arrival in Ascona. In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Great Bear .

Gordon Mallet McCouch

Gordon Mallet McCouch (1885-1956) was an American painter. In 1908 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with the German-American professor Carl von Marr . He also exhibited in the First German Autumn Salon in 1913 . In 1914 he settled in Ascona and in 1924 was a co-founder of the Great Bear .

Otto Niemeyer-Holstein

Otto Niemeyer-Holstein was a German painter. From 1902 to 1914 he attended secondary school in Kiel. In his artistic parents' home he received formative impressions from art. When the First World War broke out in 1914 , he volunteered for the soldiers. At the front near Warsaw he received a psychological shock in 1915 and was then discharged from the military as permanently unfit for use. To convalescence he went to Switzerland in 1916, where he began to draw and paint intensively in the canton of Graubünden in the town of Zuoz under the guidance of the painter Otto Wyler (1887–1965). In 1918 he moved to Ascona and met Werefkin and Jawlensky, who were important artistic stimuli for him. In 1919 he attended Arthur Segal's painting school . Study trips to Italy, Germany and France followed. In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Great Bear . Since 1931/32 Niemeyer-Holstein stayed again and again on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom , where in 1933 he acquired his property "Lüttenort". When after the seizure of power of the Nazis his paintings were removed in 1933 from museums in Kiel, Duisburg and Chemnitz, he retired to Lüttenort. In order not to endanger his artistic activity in Germany, Niemeyer no longer took part in the Great Bear's exhibitions. Only then was the orphaned position in the Great Bear Association filled again by Richard Seewald. 

Otto van Rees

Otto van Rees was a Dutch painter. Initially a student of Jan Toorop , van Rees went to Paris in 1904 and studied with Auguste Herbin , André Lhote and Jules Pascin . Since 1905 he was friends with Kees van Dongen . In 1907 he was a conscript in the Dutch army. Around 1910 van Rees made the acquaintance of Henri Le Fauconnier , Piet Mondrian and Fernand Léger, among others . In 1912 he spent the summer in Ascona for the first time. He also exhibited in the First German Autumn Salon in 1913 . In 1915 van Rees was released from military service and traveled with his family to Ascona, where he came into contact with Arthur Segal and Hans Arp. He exhibited with Arp at the Tanner Gallery in Zurich . In 1917 van Rees had close ties to Dadaism and regularly visited the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich  , where Werefkin and Jawlensky also frequented. Around 1919 van Rees met Moissej Kogan (1879–1943), who had been a member of the NKVM since 1909 and had exhibited there in 1909, 1910 and 1911. From 1923 to 1926 there were alternating stays in the Netherlands, Paris and Ascona. In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Great Bear . In 1928 he built a house in Losone not far from Ascona.

Richard Seewald

Richard Seewald was a German painter, graphic artist and writer. In 1909 he began to study architecture in Munich, but soon turned to painting as an autodidact. He made drawings and caricatures for various magazines, for example for the magazine Jugend . Seewald was in Ascona for the first time in 1910 and met Ernst Frick. He settled in nearby Ronco . In 1911 he exhibited at the Heinrich Thannhauser Modern Gallery in Munich , where the artists of the NKVM first appeared together in public in 1909. In 1912 Seewald exhibited together with Werefkin in the Max Dietzel art salon in Munich. He also exhibited in the First German Autumn Salon in 1913. In 1914 Seewald was released from military service. In 1919 he had a solo exhibition at the Munich art dealer Hans Goltz . Seewald repeatedly traveled to the Mediterranean, illustrating his own books and those of other authors. In 1924 he was a co-founder of the Great Bear . In the same year he was appointed professor at the Cologne factory schools . In 1929 the artist converted to Catholicism in the Collegio Papio of the Benedictines in Ascona and accepted orders for murals in the sacred space; for example, he painted the SS Annunziata chapel in Ronco. When the cultural and political climate in Cologne changed in 1931, Seewald finally moved to Ronco, where he became an honorary citizen in 1939. Seewald only became a member of the Great Bear after 1933 , after Otto Niemeyer-Holstein withdrew from the art business in Nazi Germany and no longer sent exhibitions abroad.

Marianne von Werefkin

Marianne von Werefkin , the majority of her artistic legacy is in the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin in Ascona, was "the most prominent figure in the group of artists The Great Bear."   By the end of the 19th century, her painting had gained so much recognition in her homeland that one gave her the nickname "Russian Rembrandt". In 1896 she moved to Munich with Jawlensky and stopped her own painting activity for ten years in order to educate him. In 1903 she made him familiar with the art of Neo-Impressionism and that of Vincent van Gogh on a first trip to France . In 1906, during her second trip to France with Jawlensky, Werefkin took up her art again and painted in the expressionist style. She had skipped Neo-Impressionism. On their third trip to France with Jawlensky in 1911, they met Henri Matisse for the first time . After the outbreak of the First World War, she emigrated to Switzerland with Jawlensky in 1914. First they lived in Saint-Prex on Lake Geneva, in 1917 in Zurich and in 1918 moved to Ascona. In 1921 Jawlensky separated from Werefkin and moved to Wiesbaden . On the other hand, she lived in Ascona with a Nansen pass until her death in 1938 and had never become Swiss.

Exhibitions of the Great Bear

The association arranged its first exhibition in 1924 at Café Verbano in Ascona. Under the name of The Great Bear, exhibitions were held in which not only and not always all club members took part. From 1924 to 1941, exhibitions in Ascona were mostly shown in the Museo Comunale every year. In addition, the Casa Serodine also served as an exhibition space. Further exhibitions took place in the Kunsthalle Bern , the Kunsthaus Zürich , the Kunstmuseum Luzern and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen . An exhibition that was shown in 1928 in the Nierendorf Gallery in Berlin is of particular importance. In 1941, the year of the war, the Great Bear disbanded .

The Great Bear's corps spirit

The artists 'association was not a stylistically bound artists' association. In 1928 it was believed that he could criticize that he lacked the “position of struggle against the outside world, the pathos of principles, the advocacy of sharply delimited stylistic peculiarities”. One had overlooked the fact that it was precisely the rules of the game of collegial togetherness between different painters and not a formulated program that points back to the characteristic values ​​of those artists' associations that the Werefkin helped to shape in Munich. Werefkin already said in connection with the Brotherhood of Saint Luke that “art, friendship and sympathy” unite the members. Nor were it stylistic constraints that led to the founding of the NKVM, but rather a general openness to different styles, for example Neo-Impressionism , which some painters still represented in 1909. 

Even the Der Blaue Reiter editorial team committed to a plurality of styles. In the preamble of the catalog to his first exhibition in 1911 it reads: “In this small exhibition we are not trying to propagate a precise and special form, but rather we aim to show in the diversity of the forms represented how the inner desires of the artists are manifold designed. "   In it, that sounds " "principle of the freedom   to, with the Werefkin the only Kandinsky's abstract painting" composition V, the Last judgment "defended on December 2, 1911, when it was about to be or not art. It took almost ten years until it was accepted that the artists of the Great Bear, in spite of all their diversity, had come together to “work together and stay together as friends ” . As early as 1928, Werefkin had expressed herself very similarly in her illustrated “Ascona Impressionen”, which she dedicated to the Zurich art critic Hans Trog (1864–1928): “We Asconese artists are very decent and collegial to one another.” 

literature

  • Hugo Ball (Ed.): Cabaret Voltaire. A collection of artistic and literary contributions , Zurich 1916
  • Otto Brattskoven : The painters from Ascona . In: Art of Time. Organ of the Artists' Self-Help Vol. 11, No. 7, 1928
  • Marion Fouquet: The “Big Bear” has seven stars. For the opening of this year's exhibition of the "Big Bear" in San Cristoforo-Ascona , In: Sie und Er No. 32, 1937
  • Clemens Weiler, Marianne von Werefkin: “J'aime les choses, qui ne sont pas”, From the diaries and sketch books of an artist , In: Wiesbaden. Festive spa and congress town 4/1958
  • Curt Riess: Ascona, history of the strangest village in the world , Zurich 1977
  • Theo Kneubühler: The artists and writers and Ticino (from 1900 to the present) . In: exhib. Cat .: Monte Verita, Mountain of Truth, Local Anthropology as a Contribution to the Rediscovery of a Modern Sacred Topography , Ascona 1978
  • Harald Szeemann : Monte Verita - the mountain of truth . In: exhib. Cat .: Monte Verita, Mountain of Truth, Local Anthropology as a Contribution to the Rediscovery of a Modern Sacred Topography , Ascona 1978
  • Robert Landmann: Ascona - Monte Verità , Frankfurt / M., Berlin, Vienna 1979
  • Exhib. Cat .: Groups of artists in Switzerland 1910–1936 , Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau 1981
  • Exhib. Cat .: Richard Seewald (1889–1976), On the 100th Birthday, Kölnisches Stadtmuseum , Cologne 1989
  • Achim Roscher: Otto Niemeyer-Holstein, Life with Landscape and Figures , Berlin 2002
  • Bernd Fäthke : Werefkin: On association and jury questions . Torso, Association of Berlin Women Artists 1967–2003, Berlin 2003
  • Bernd Fäthke, The Great Bear, in exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin. From the Blue Rider to the Big Bear , Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014, p. 212 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Szeemann: Monte Verità - the mountain of truth . In exh. Cat .: Monte Verità. Mountain of truth. Local anthropology as a contribution to the rediscovery of a modern sacred topography , Ascona 1978, p. 5 f.
  2. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin and her influence on the Blue Rider . In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, paintings and sketches . Museum Wiesbaden 1980, p. 19
  3. ↑ Valentine Macardé: Le renouveau de l'art russe picturale 1863 to 1914 . Lausanne 1971, p. 136
  4. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin, Leben und Werk, Munich 1988, p. 42 ff.
  5. ^ Gustav Pauli: memories from seven decades . Tübingen 1936, p. 264 ff.
  6. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin . Munich 2001, p. 122 ff.
  7. ↑ Rosel Gollek: The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus Munich . Munich 1974, p. 10
  8. ↑ Ulrike Becks-Malorny, Der Kunstverein in Barmen 1866-1946, civil patronage between the Empire and National Socialism, Wuppertal 1992, p. 39 ff
  9. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: 1911, The Blue Rider with Jawlensky in Ahrenshoop . Prerow and Zingst, Blue Riders in Munich and Berlin. 8. Announcement of the Association of Berlin Women Artists 1998, Berlin 1998, p. VIII f.
  10. ^ Hans Manfred Bock, Florian Tennstedt, Raphael Friedeberg: Doctor and anarchist in Ascona . In exh. Cat .: Monte Verità, Mountain of Truth, Local Anthropology as a contribution to the rediscovery of a modern sacred topography . Ascona 1978, p. 44
  11. ^ Gerhard Wietek : Georg Tappert 1880–1957, A trailblazer for German modernism 1880–1957 . Munich 1980, p. 29
  12. ↑ Viviane Ehrli, Der Moderne Bund, in exh. Cat .: Groups of Artists in Switzerland 1910-1936, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau 1981, p. 26 ff
  13. ↑ The original is in the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin and is “9. March 1913 ”.
  14. ↑ George Mauner: From Pont-Aven to the "bridge" - Amiet as "pons inter pontes" . In exh. Cat .: Cuno Amiet, From Pont-Aven to the “Bridge” . Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern 1999, p. 24 ff.
  15. ↑ Clemens Weiler (ed.): Alexej Jawlensky, memoirs . Heads-Faces-Meditations, Hanau 1970, p. 114
  16. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Alexej Jawlensky, drawing-graphic documents . Exhib. Cat .: Museum Wiesbaden 1983, p. 13 f.
  17. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky and his companions in a new light . Munich 2004, p. 172 f., 176 f.
  18. ↑ Walter Jollos, Walter Helbig, in: Die Schaffenden . A selection of the years I to III and the catalog of the portfolio, Leipzig / Weimar 1984, p. 189
  19. ^ Curt Riess: Ascona. History of the strangest village in the world . Zurich 1977, p. 129
  20. ^ Achim Roscher: Otto Niemeyer-Holstein, Life with Landscape and Figures , Berlin 2002, p. 71
  21. ^ Hugo Ball (Ed.): Cabaret Voltaire. A collection of artistic and literary contributions , Zurich 1916, no p.
  22. ↑ Exhib. Cat .: The Blue Rider and the New Image. From the Neue Künstlervereinigung München zum Blauen Reiter , Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 1999, pp. 337 f., 345, 349
  23. ↑ Ursula Codoni: Richard Seewald, The first exhibitions . In exh. Cat .: Richard Seewald (1889–1976), On the 100th birthday . Cologne City Museum, Cologne 1989, p. 21
  24. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Marianne von Werefkin: "J'aime les choses, qui ne sont pas". From the diaries and sketch books of an artist , Wiesbaden, Festliche Kur- und Kongressstadt, 4/1958, p. 12
  25. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Werefkin and Jawlensky with their son Andreas in the "Murnauer Zeit" . In exh. Cat .: 1908-2008. 100 years ago. Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky, Werefkin in Murnau , Murnau 2008, p. 44 ff.
  26. ↑ Beatrice Holderegger and Suzanne Lüthi, Der Grosse Bär, in exh. Cat .: Groups of Artists in Switzerland 1910-1936, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau 1981, p. 98 f.
  27. ^ Theo Kneubühler: The artists and writers and Ticino (from 1900 to the present) . In exh. Cat .: Monte Verita, Mountain of Truth, Local Anthropology as a Contribution to the Rediscovery of a Modern Sacred Topography , Ascona 1978, p. 158.
  28. ↑ Otto Brattskoven: The Painter of Ascona, art of the time . In: Art of Time. Organ der Künstlerelbsthilfe Vol. 11, No. 7, 1928, p. 138.
  29. ↑ See: exhib. Cat .: The Blue Rider and the New Image, From the “New Artists' Association Munich” to the Blue Rider . Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich 1999, cat. No. 1–48.
  30. ↑ Rosel Gollek: The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus Munich , Munich 1974, p 274th
  31. ^ Marianne Werefkin: Letter to Dr. Richard Reiche, the director of the Kunstverein in Barmen , Munich 1912, Fondazione Marianne Werefkin, Ascona p. 2
  32. ↑ Wolfgang Macke (eds.): August Macke / Franz Marc, Briefwechsel , Cologne 1964, p. 84
  33. ↑ Marion Fouquet: The "Big Bear" has seven stars. For the opening of this year's exhibition of the "Big Bear" in San Cristoforo-Ascona . In: Sie und Er No. 32, 1937, p. 869.
  34. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Werefkin's homage to Ascona . In exh. Cat .: Series of publications, Association August Macke House: Marianne Werefkin, The color bites me to the heart , Bonn 1999, p. 31 ff.
  35. ↑ Frederik Jensen (ed.): Marianne von Werefkin 1860–1938, impressions of Ascona . Galleria Via Sacchetti, Ascona 1988, no p.