Edwin Suermondt

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Carl Friedrich Edwin Suermondt (born July 14, 1883 in Aachen ; † July 17, 1923 there ) was a German lawyer , art historian and art collector . He was one of the earliest collectors of modern art in the Rhineland .

Life

Edwin Suermondt was born in Aachen in 1883 to Emil Carl Suermondt and his wife Anna, née Englerth. The wealthy Suermondt family originally came from the Netherlands. The father lived as a reindeer on the income from his property. The mother also came from a wealthy family. Edwin Suermondt was given Drove Castle as his residence from their property . One of Edwin Suermondt's well-known relatives is his great-uncle Barthold Suermondt , who, as a patron, donated parts of his art collection to what is now the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum .

In 1901 Edwin Suermondt passed his Abitur at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Aachen and then studied law and art history at the universities of Oxford , Heidelberg , Bonn and Berlin . He completed his law studies with a doctorate. For his degree in art history he worked in Munich with Heinrich Wölfflin on the painter Hieronymus Bosch , but was unable to publish his doctoral thesis due to the war. He was a member of the social association Club Aachener Casino .

Henri Rousseau: The Independence Centennial , formerly the Edwin Suermondt collection, now the Getty Museum
Heinrich Nauen: Bathing women from the Drove cycle, formerly the Edwin Suermondt collection, now the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum

During his studies in Heidelberg Suermondt met the future art dealer and author Wilhelm Uhde , with whom he became a close friend. Uhde lived in Paris from 1904, where Suermondt visited him several times. Uhde introduced him to artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque , whom Suermondt visited in their studios. Uhde also brought him to Gertrude Stein's salon , where he met numerous other personalities from cultural life. As an art dealer, Uhde brokered the first purchases for Suermondt in 1905. These included works by Henri Rousseau , Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck . In 1906, Suermondt acquired Picasso's Seated Harlequin (now the Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York), one of the most famous works in his collection. Other paintings by Henri Rousseau centenary of independence (now J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles) bought Suermondt at the Düsseldorf gallery Flechtheim , Rousseau Joueurs de football ( Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York) came on the Munich art dealer Heinrich Thannhauser in his collection. Other paintings in the collection were by artists such as Oskar Kokoschka , Auguste Herbin , Marie Laurencin , Paul Klee , Odilon Redon , Johannes Molzahn , Johannes Itten , Ernst Isselmann , Josef Eberz , Hermann Tiebert and Eugene Spiro . There were also graphics by Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse , Auguste Rodin , Ferdinand Hodler , Paul Klee, Ernst Isselmann, Josef Eberz, Hermann Tiebert, Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Heinrich Nauen , Georg Kolbe and a sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck . Suermondt repeatedly lent works from his collection for special exhibitions, for example in 1912 for the important show of the Sonderbund in Cologne.

By 1909 at the Aachen Art Museum make Edwin Redslob learned Suermondt know the painter Heinrich Nauen. After initially purchasing a few watercolors by the artist, Suermondt commissioned the artist with the execution of six large-format paintings for the music room of Drove Castle. The Drove cycle , completed in 1913 , was exhibited in Alfred Flechtheim's gallery in 1914 and is now in the collection of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld.

Suermondt took an active part in the First World War, most recently as Rittmeister in the Leib-Dragoon Regiment (2nd Grand Ducal Hessian) No. 24 . During the war he married Martha Compes in 1916. The two children Egbert and Mechthild come from this marriage. After the war, Suermondt participated in the founding of the artists' association Das Junge Rheinland in 1919 . In 1922 he published a monograph on Heinrich Nauen.

Suermondt died in 1923 of a lung disease from which he had suffered since the First World War. He found his final resting place in the family crypt in Aachen's Westfriedhof . The Suermondt art collection passed into the possession of the widow upon his death. In 1927 she married Alex Vömel , the manager of Galerie Flechtheim. The art collection was temporarily known as the Suermondt-Vömel Collection and later entered the art trade.

Publications

  • Heinrich Nauen , Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1922.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gary Tinterow, Susan Alyson Stein, Magdalena Dabrowski: Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. , P. 46.
personal data
SURNAME Suermondt, Edwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Suermondt, Carl Friedrich Edwin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, art historian and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1923
Place of death Aachen