Günther Franke

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Günther Franke (born October 29, 1900 in Berlin ; † October 5, 1976 in Munich ) was a German gallery owner , art dealer and art collector.

Life

The son of the head of an agricultural and commercial bank began his career after the end of the war in 1918 as a trainee with the gallery owner Israel Ber Neumann on Kurfürstendamm, who is enthusiastic about contemporary art . In the Graphisches Kabinett he first worked on an exhibition by Lyonel Feininger , where he met Max Beckmann in 1921 . When Neumann emigrated to New York in 1923, Franke was given the "Münchner Neumann-Filiale, founded two years ago."

In the same year the painter Otto Dix portrayed him together with the art historian Paul Ferdinand Schmidt and the gallery owner Karl Nierendorf . Franke met Erich Heckel , Ernst Wilhelm Nay , Emil Nolde and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff . In the summer of 1929 he exhibited lithographs, etchings and drawings on the subject of French graphics from Ingres to Picasso . At IB Neumann and Günther Franke in Munich in 1930 works by Georges Rouault as well as watercolors, hand drawings and lithographs by Alfred Kubin were shown. The gallery presented Josef Scharl in 1931 , the painters Joseph Mader and Max Wendl in a group exhibition in 1932 , and the sculptor Fritz Müller, from 1932 to 1938 pictures by Edgar Ende . In January 1941, Franke visited Beckmann, who had fled to Amsterdam, and there he bought his paintings Circus Carriage and Homecoming. The Günther Franke gallery, which has been independent since 1937 at the latest, was located in the classicist Palais Almeida at Brienner Strasse 10 until 1944. In the branch in Seeshaupt on Lake Starnberg, "'degenerate art' was hidden and sold."

In the spring of 1946 Franke rented Franz von Stuck's former sculptor's studio in Prinzregentenstrasse and opened it with paintings by Franz Xaver Fuhr . Afterwards, works by Max Beckmann and Franz Marc were on view in the Villa Stuck . “The history of Galerie Franke is one of the most important and enjoyable chapters in the latest history of the art city of Munich. It fulfilled a task: there were certainly not a few who were only introduced to the most modern art through these exhibitions. "

A show in honor of 80-year-old Emil Nolde was followed by a memorial exhibition for Oskar Schlemmer . In 1947 the "lively Günther Franke Gallery" presented Willi Baumeister as a representative of the "avant-garde of German contemporary painting."

In 1949 Franke loaned the Perseus triptych and a self-portrait by Max Beckmann, doubter and reader from Barlach, pen drawings by Kubin, paintings by Scharl and Schrimpf and watercolors by Ernst Wilhelm Nay for the exhibition Kunstschaffen in Deutschland in the gallery of Central Collecting Point . In 1974 Franke donated 29 paintings and one Beckmann sculpture to the Free State of Bavaria. "This means that the Munich State Gallery now has the largest Beckmann collection in Europe."

Franke lived in Nibelungenstrasse. 28 in the Munich district of Neuhausen and was buried there at the Winthir cemetery.

literature

  • Felix Billeter: art dealer, collector, donor - Günther Franke as a mediator of modern art in Munich 1923-1976 , Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, [2017], ISBN 978-3-11-048746-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Max Schneede, Max Beckmann, Munich 2011, p. 67
  2. ^ New research on the art dealer and collector Günther Franke, Munich 2011
  3. ↑ Hans Eckstein, In the service of modern art, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich September 12, 1946, p. 5
  4. ↑ Hans Eckstein, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich September 27, 1947, p. 3
  5. ↑ Reinhard Müller-Mehlis, On the death of Günther Franke, Weltkunst, No. 46, Munich 1976, p. 2120
personal data
SURNAME Franke, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gallery owner, art dealer and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 5th October 1976
Place of death Munich