Gallery Commeter

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Seat of the Commeter Gallery, Bergstrasse 11 / Hermannstrasse, Hamburg
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: The painters of the bridge , 1925, (from left to right: Müller, Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff)

The Commeter Gallery is the oldest art gallery in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg and was founded in 1821 by Georg Ernst Harzen (1790–1862). In 1878 Wilhelm Suhr took over the gallery, which has been run as a family business since then; currently in cooperation with the sister gallery Persiehl & Heine .

History and impact

In October 1821, the art dealer Georg Ernst Harzen opened an art and paper shop at Johannisstrasse 48, near the Hamburg stock exchange , in which, after 1822, the Kunstverein in Hamburg , founded in 1817 and which Harzen had taken over management, also resided. As early as 1824, Harzen handed over the management to Johann Matthias Commeter , who continued to operate the gallery in new business premises as the art dealership JM Commeter on Neuer Wall 39. The building was destroyed during the great fire of 1842: Harzen was able to save a large part of the works of art and reopen the gallery in 1844.

To 1900

In the first half of the 19th century, the art trade and the art association were "not in competition - but in a complementary relationship" (Ulrike Renz). Commeter and Harzen had a major influence on and shaped art life in Hamburg until 1847; they "were among the founders and most active members of the art association" (Renz). In addition, with the legacy of the two internationally renowned dealers and art collectors, the Hanseatic city received 30,000 prints and drawings by, among others, Dürer, Rembrandt and Raffael, which were included in the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett at the Hamburger Kunsthalle . "Without resins and commeters," wrote Alfred Lichtwark , the first director of the Kunsthalle later, "a deeper artistic education cannot be acquired in Hamburg". Today Georg Ernst Harzen is considered to be the "founder of the Hamburger Kunsthalle" (Silke Reuther). The gallery remained a defining institution in Hamburg's art life even after the founding period: Wilhelm Becker and Christian Meyer took over the art dealership in 1847, followed by Wilhelm Suhr in 1878, who relocated the business premises to Hermannstrasse, the Hamburg realists and impressionists promoted by Alfred Lichtwark Forum and led the gallery into the dawn of modernity. In this important era, Commeter was the first gallery to show Edvard Munch , Emil Nolde and the Expressionists of the Brücke in Hamburg. As early as 1897, Wilhelm Suhr included his son as a partner.

1900 until today

Under the direction of Wilhelm Suhr Junior, the gallery and the then affiliated art publisher found a new home in 1908 in the Art Nouveau house on Hermannstrasse, in the immediate vicinity of Hamburg's town hall, where the gallery has resided since then to this day. In 1952, Andreas Suhr took over the gallery, if only for a short episode. For the period from 1953 to 1959, details can be found in the central archive of the international art trade. Andreas Suhr was followed in 1969 by his daughter Hella Suhr, together with her husband Bernd Sommer. They continued the existing line of tradition with their close contacts to the artists of the Brücke , dedicated their first two major exhibitions to Salvador Dali and Alfred Hrdlicka , and repeatedly showed works by Hamburg painters and graphic artists such as Eduard Bargheer , Bruno Bruni , Hanno Edelmann , Paul Wunderlich and brought the very first pictures by Natias Neutert onto the market. Since 1997 the Commeter gallery has been managed by Carola Persiehl, Wilhelm Suhr's great-great-granddaughter.

Gallery artist

Artists such as Sybille Hermanns, Stephan Heggelke, Minjung Kim, Klaus Schweier, the illustrator Li Trieb, Jochen Hein, Nikolai Makarov, Maria Ikonomopolou, Lars Zech and the wood sculptor Zoyt are currently represented. In 2007, the sister gallery Persiehl & Heine was founded, which specializes entirely in photography by contemporary artists and has exhibitions with works by Matthias Bothor , Kenro Izu, Beba Lindhorst, Robert Lebeck , Sarah Moon , Doug & Mike Starn, Christian Schoppe, Alex Timmermans and Gregor Törzs has shown and shows.

literature

  • Silke Reuther: Georg Ernst Harzen. Art dealer, collector and founder of the Hamburger Kunsthalle . A biography. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-07088-2 .
  • Ulrike Renz: ... expanding the ennobling influence of art to ever larger circles ... bourgeoisie and fine arts in Hamburg in the late 18th and 19th centuries . Dissertation . Bielefeld University, 2001, pp. 66, 67. (online)
  • Anton Lindner , Gustav Pauli : Anniversary exhibition to celebrate the centenary of the Commeter Gallery. Hamburg 1821–1921 . Catalog with critical considerations, Hartung, Hamburg 1921, ( online , Hamburg State and University Library)
  • Ernst Harzen. In: Walter Heinrich Dammann : Panorama and table landscape. Beginnings and early days of landscape painting in Hamburg until 1830 . Commeter, Hamburg 1910, p. 44 ff. ( Online , Hamburg State and University Library)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See address book of the city of Hamburg. 1838, p. 530.
  2. ↑ Silke Reuther: Commeter, Johann Matthias . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 79 .
  3. ↑ http://www.artcontent.de/zadik/akte.aspx?b_id=58&akte=7938


Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 3.3 ″  N , 9 ° 59 ′ 42.3 ″  E