Case of Karl Waldmann

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The Karl Waldmann case deals with the lack of evidence of the existence of an artist by the name of Karl Waldmann, who is alleged to be the author of collages that appeared in 1990 and were exhibited at the Kunsthaus Dresden in 2015 . Works attributed to Waldmann were also sold at auctions for over 10,000 euros, despite their extremely dubious provenance . It is about the suspicion of art forgery .

The journalist Thomas Steinfeld was one of the first to take up the strange Karl Waldmann case in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on August 27 and 28, 2015. It focuses on the exhibition of eleven collages under the signature KW as part of a group exhibition entitled Artificial Facts / Boundary Objects , which was on view from June 20 to September 20, 2015 at the Kunsthaus Dresden - Städtische Galerie für Gegenwartskunst . The exhibition was mainly devoted to current artistic works that deal with concrete aspects of European colonial history and its consequences as well as the future of ethnological collections in Europe from a contemporary perspective. The central question of the journalist Thomas Steinfeld was whether Waldmann and his work, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung , are “an unidentifiable object” of the visual arts , which means that a Karl Waldmann may never have existed. Thomas Steinfeld said in the SZ that it is “the alleged works of a fictional artist who was invented in order to be able to feed the works ascribed to him into the art business and art trade ”. The presumption of falsification triggered a rapid response from the press without any new findings confirming the presumption. Swantje Karich wrote in Die Welt about Waldmann, whose collages ascribed to him are strongly reminiscent of Karl Hermann Trinkaus : “His recent career is amazing. It is shown internationally, although the only source is a flea market find. [...] To this day, Waldmann's biography cannot be verified. "

The Kunsthaus Dresden dealt openly with the unanswered questions about Karl Waldmann's person and the dating of the collages shown and made the references to the doubts formulated here transparent during the duration of the exhibition and its findings so far in an event at the end of August, for which the lender also of the works that gallery owner Pascal Polar had the floor to speak about.

On September 2, 2015, Karl Waldmann's works were removed from the exhibition.

background

In 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall , the Strasbourg journalist Jean Milossis is said to have discovered two "constructivist" collages on a Polish-run flea market in Berlin. They were signed with the initials KW or the full name Karl Waldmann and are said to come from a garage near Dresden. More detailed information on the first site and the people who worked there were lost in the course of the work being passed on to their current custodians. The dealer only revealed so much about the artist that he was "an old uncle" who disappeared in 1958 with his wife, a Russian artist. There are various stories about the origin of the works, the above is taken from the website of the gallery owner Pascal Polar. Here you can also find detailed information on the motifs and the source material for individual collages.

The works ascribed to Karl Waldmann have been exhibited in public since 1999, initially in the rooms of gallery owner Bernard Dudoignon in Paris, and in 2001 in Milan in the Galleria Carla Sozzani. Dudoignon acquired ten works through the journalist Jean Milossis. In 2001, the gallery owner and collector Pascal Polar met the journalist Milossis in Brussels and acquired the first few works with the signature KW. Between 2003 and 2006, Jean Milossis offered works under this signature to several dealers, including the 1900–2000 gallery of the Parisian gallery owner Marcel Fleiss and the second-hand bookshop L'insomniac in Strasbourg, which no longer exists.

In 2003 the Pascal Polar gallery showed some works in Brussels under the exhibition title "Karl Waldmann 1935–1955". In 2006, at the 51st Foires des antiquitaires de Belgique art fair, “more than a hundred of the almost a thousand collages from the period between 1915 and 1950/60 found in recent years” were exhibited. Both Marcel Fleiss and Pascal Polar did their first research in Dresden.

The German Hygiene Museum in Dresden showed interest in the work, but suggested further research on the originator of the collages with the signature KW as a prerequisite for a presentation, as an artist under this name was not to be found in the classic directories of Dresden artists. Thomas Steinfeld writes: "Those responsible would have [...] been amazed at the perfection in which motifs from different directions of classical modernism are combined in these works with political criticism of two totalitarian systems."

The group exhibition Artificial Facts / Boundary Objects , which was funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, is devoted to current questions about aspects of unethical collecting in connection with the emergence of today's ethnological collection in connection with the discussion about the Humboldt Forum in Berlin Collections.

“Questions of examining collections for their ethical evaluation and examining the possibility of restitution are currently a major challenge for ethnological museums in Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and also in Dresden. We are surprised to what extent the issue of the exhibition about a changed approach to colonial collections and post-colonial culture of remembrance is overshadowed by the debates about the works attributed to Karl Waldmann. (Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz, Artistic Director of the Kunsthaus Dresden) "

In an interview with Antje Allroggen you can also find the following quote from the head of department Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz:

“I think the excitement about this work comes very much from a very specific segment of the art market for which it is very important whether the work is from the 30s or 50s. It's very interesting for us, but it's not the most important thing. As I said, our house gives suggestions and shows things that should be dealt with further, but not from a museum perspective. "

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In August 2015, a Berlin art dealer filed criminal charges against unknown persons; He raised the charge that Karl Waldmann's work did not come from the time of Constructivism and not from an artist who bore this name or used it as a pseudonym . However, there is obviously a commercial interest in his work, so that fraud is present. Preliminary investigations by the State Criminal Police Offices in Berlin and Saxony then began .

On August 27, 2015, under the title Karl Waldmann - Discovery or Invention? a press conference and an evening event took place. In addition to the presentation of a current interim report of its own research on the "Waldmann case", the Kunsthaus Dresden also announced that it would have a sheet from "Karl Waldmann's" oeuvre subjected to a spectrometric analysis. When asked why such an investigation had not been carried out beforehand, gallery owner Pascal Polar said that there was insufficient money for such an examination, and that the ' semantic ' proof of the authenticity of the work was so overwhelming that the question arises the material is superfluous.

A study carried out at the Heidenau Paper Technology Foundation , the results of which were announced at the beginning of October 2015, did not reveal any evidence of a date of origin after 1958. The material and the glue that make up the collages were therefore already available when the works were supposed to be created . Research by the Kunsthaus Dresden on provenances and references to an artist who can be associated with the possibly fictitious name of Karl Waldmann remained unsuccessful.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Art forgery: Karl Waldmann just an invention? kunstmarkt.com (accessed December 18, 2018)
  2. ↑ Andreas Wassermann: Art forgery Karl Waldmann, the Dada Phantom , spiegel.de of September 30, 2005 (accessed December 18, 2018)
  3. ↑ Thomas Steinfeld: Who was Waldmann? Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 27, 2015, p. 9.
  4. ↑ a b c Riddle about Dadaists: Did Karl Waldmann really exist? Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 27, 2015, accessed on August 29, 2015.
  5. ↑ Swantje Karich: Blessed are those who see and do not believe . Die Welt , August 28, 2015.
  6. ↑ Declaration on the website , accessed on September 25, 2015.
  7. ^ Karl Waldmann and Constructivism Opens in Brussels . artdaily.com, November 13, 2005, accessed August 29, 2015.
  8. ^ Art forgery: Karl Waldmann just an invention? kunstmarkt.com (accessed December 18, 2018)
  9. ↑ Musée Karl Waldmann: www.karlwaldmannmuseum.com
  10. ^ Musée Karl Waldmann: biography of Karl Waldmann . , last updated in 2015
  11. ↑ Angelika Heinick: Bigger and more beautiful: The 51st Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique in Brussels . FAZ , January 21, 2006, accessed on September 1, 2015
  12. ^ Kunsthaus Dresden: Künstliche Tatsachen / Artificial Facts, exhibition Boundary Objects, June 20 - September 20, 2015 . Press release from the Kunsthaus Dresden. Municipal Gallery for Contemporary Art, August 28, 2015. The press release can be downloaded as a PDF from the Kunsthaus Dresden website
  13. ↑ The Invisible Artist , Deutschlandfunk, broadcast on the program "Kultur heute" on August 30, 2015
  14. ↑ Thomas Steinfeld: Postcolonial nonsense . Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 28, 2015, p. 9.
  15. ^ O. V .: The glue is really old . Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 5, 2015.