Gerd Rosen Gallery

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The Gerd Rosen Gallery , often referred to simply as the Rosen Gallery , was an art gallery of modernism , avant-garde art of the 20th century , existing in Berlin from 1945 to 1962 , and is considered the first post-war gallery in Germany.

founding

Gerd Rosen on a memorial plaque on Kurfürstendamm 215

The gallery was founded by the bookseller Gerd Rosen, the merchant and art collector Max Leon Flemming and the painter Heinz Trökes . The construction also was Ilse-Margret Vogel involved. It officially opened on August 9, 1945 at Kurfürstendamm 215 in Berlin-Charlottenburg , between Uhlandstrasse and Fasanenstrasse , with an exhibition of artists who had recently been considered " degenerate ".

Gerd Rosen

Gerd Rosen (born August 17, 1903 in Berlin, † December 10, 1961 in Berlin), of Jewish origin, had attended university in Berlin and trained as a bookseller in the Wasmuth bookstore . In 1923 he went to Zurich as the successor to the antiquarian Helmuth Domizlaff , but returned to Berlin in 1925 to become head of the Hans Wertheim antiquarian bookshop in the Wertheim department store . This is where Rosen and Flemming met. In the course of the Aryanization of the department store, Gerd Rosen also lost his job: as he could not stay in the second-hand bookshop, he was transferred to the China department. He then went to Vienna with his family in 1933 and found employment in the antiquarian bookshop founded by Hans Peter Kraus in 1932 , but only until 1938, when he was imprisoned.

He received the concession to run an antiquarian bookshop in Germany, but at the same time also received an entry permit for the USA. At his wife's request, they stayed in Germany. At the end of the “Greater German Empire” he was able to buy up the stocks of the Viennese art and antiquarian book dealer Christian M. Nebehay and had to earn his living in private book and art trading until the end of the war.

Since Gerd Rosen was primarily a bookseller, he got special advice for gallery exhibitions from Flemming. The first artistic director was Heinz Trökes until 1946, followed by the sculptor Hans Uhlmann until 1947 , who was finally followed by Rudolf Springer until the summer of 1948 , who set up his own gallery in December 1948 , and the artist Wolfgang Frankenstein from 1948 to 1951 .

First years

In a very short time the gallery advanced to become the center of Berlin's art avant-garde. Here, artists exhibited who until recently had been banned from painting and whose pictures had been removed from exhibitions and museums and some of them destroyed.

Heinz Trökes summarized the gallery's program: “The only concept we had was not to exhibit Nazis”.

The artists in the gallery included Heinz Trökes, Werner Heldt , Paul Strecker , Juro Kubicek , Hans Thiemann , Mac Zimmermann , Alexander Camaro , Otto Hofmann , Curt Lahs , Jeanne Mammen , Wolfgang Frankenstein , Herbert Spangenberg and Hannah Höch . In addition, works by the sculptors Karl Hartung , Bernhard Heiliger , Hans Uhlmann and Louise Stomps were shown.

To make it clear that these Berlin avant-garde artists are part of an artistic tradition, solo exhibitions were alternated with group shows, in which the gallery visitors saw French Modernism with Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse , Georges Braque , or Expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde as well Works by other avant-garde artists such as Paul Klee , Alexej von Jawlensky , Fernand Léger , Raoul Hausmann and Marc Chagall were shown.

Lectures on art movements and opening addresses for the respective exhibition by Edwin Redslob , Heinz Trökes, Hannah Höch and Werner Heldt, among others, were given to the art-interested audience, starved by the Nazi regime for twelve years . On these occasions the gallery was always overcrowded, since until then there had only been art that had been brought into line by the Nazis and so extensive discussions followed these lectures.

In 1948 there was a secession of the artists Hartung, Mammen, Thiemann, Trökes, Uhlmann and Zimmermann, who exhibited only once in the autumn of that year under the name Zone 5 in the Galerie Franz, Kaiserallee 214. The name of the artist group, which was invented by Heinz Trökes, referred to the four sectors of what was then Berlin in order to reject the renewed political appropriation of art.

After 1948

The most important time of the Rosen Gallery lasted until 1948 on Kurfürstendamm. In 1949 the move to Hardenbergstrasse 7. Even if important exhibitions were held until 1950, the coming Cold War and the emerging division of Berlin into East and West with the associated ideologization of modern art was detrimental to the gallery. From 1948 and the Berlin blockade , the Rosen gallery was facing bankruptcy. Wolfgang Frankenstein tried to keep up his interest in modern art, but more and more the business interest in the second-hand bookshop and book auctions came to the fore. With the book and art auctions, the gallery received a response that reached far beyond Berlin.

One year after Gerd Rosen's death in 1961, the gallery and the antiquarian bookshop were finally closed after his widow had briefly taken over the management of the company. A significant proportion of the employees continued their work in Gerda Bassenge's gallery , who, as a former employee of Gerd Rosen, had founded her own company soon after his death. Her gallery Bassenge has developed over the decades into one of the most important and traditional auction houses in Germany to this day.

Exhibitions (selection)

See Markus Krause: Gerd Rosen Gallery . Berlin 1995, pp. 153–160 (exhibition directory of Galerie Gerd Rosen 1945–1950)

1945

  • Exhibition of young art (Jürgen Eggert, Wladimir Lindenberg , Heinz Trökes)
  • Modern graphics (collective exhibition with Bernhard Klein, Erich Krause, Juro Kubicek, Helmut Pelzer Hans Thiemann)
  • Sculpture and sculptural drawings (collective exhibition with Paul Dierkes, Karl Hartung, Gottfried Kappen, Gustav Seitz, Renée Sintenis, Louise Stomps , Christian Theunert , Hans Uhlmann)
  • Hans Uhlmann (solo exhibition)
  • Curt Lahs (collective exhibition)
  • August Macke - Hermann Blumenthal , memorial exhibition

1946

1947

  • Jeanne Mammen (solo exhibition with exhibition booklet)
  • Otto Hofmann (solo exhibition with exhibition booklet)
  • Negro sculpture (with catalog, text by Gerd Kutscher)
  • Hans Kuhn (solo exhibition)
  • Hans Uhlmann (solo exhibition)
  • Herbert Spangenberg - Wilhelm Haerlin - Herbert Mhe
  • 2nd annual show, artist group Gerd Rosen (with Heinz Trökes, Juro Kubicek, Karl Hartung, Herbert Spangenberg)
  • Jan Bontjes van Beek

1948

  • Children's drawings (with exhibition booklet)
  • Carnival by roses (with Heinz Trökes)
  • Karl Hartung , sculpture and graphics (solo exhibition, with exhibition booklet)
  • Gerhard Moll , pictures and drawings (with exhibition booklet)
  • Woty Werner (with exhibition booklet )
  • Summer exhibition of the artist group of the Gerd Rosen gallery (with Heinz Trökes)

1949 Relocation to Hardenbergstrasse 7, 3rd floor, and interruption of gallery activities from January to March 1949. In addition, the Graphisches Kabinett with its own exhibitions was set up on Kurfürstendamm 215 . Exhibitions in Hardenbergstrasse 7:

  • Wolfgang Frankenstein, watercolors, oil paintings, drawings (solo exhibition with exhibition booklet)
  • Woty Werner, Bildwebereien (solo exhibition with exhibition booklet)
  • Max Ackermann (solo exhibition with exhibition booklet)

1950

1955

1956

1958

1959 , 1960 , 1962

Memorial exhibition 1995

On the occasion of the publication of a monograph on the Galerie Rosen in 1995, Markus Krause and the owner of the Galerie Pels-Leusden Berlin, Bernd Schultz, organized an anniversary exhibition at the Galerie Pels-Leusden from September 1 to September 14, 1995 under the title: Galerie Gerd Rosen : The avant-garde in Berlin 1945–1950 , in which all of Rosen's artists were represented once again with over one hundred works from the period, some of them on private loans.

Plaque

In 1986 a bronze plaque was unveiled in memory of Gerd Rosen, the founder of the first post-war gallery on Kurfürstendamm 215.

literature

  • Berlinische Galerie. Museum educational service. Eckhard Gillen. Dieter Schmidt (Ed.): Zone 5. Art in the four-sector city 1945 to 1951 . Berlin 1989.
  • Markus Krause: Gerd Rosen Gallery - The Avant-garde in Berlin 1945–1950. Ars Nicolai, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89479-070-9 .
  • Carl Ernst Kohlhauer: Gerd Rosen (1903–1961) - antiquarian, gallery owner and auctioneer in Berlin . In: From the Antiquariat NF 9, 2011, pp. 199–218.

Web links

Commons : Galerie Gerd Rosen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Galerie Gerd Rosen , accessed on July 20, 2017.
  2. a b conversation with Christian M. Nebehay. In: From the second-hand bookshop. Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels. No. 25/1985 of March 29, 1985, p. A103.
  3. ^ Krause: Gallery Gerd Rosen. Berlin 1995, p. 17. Interview quote from March 27, 1991.
  4. Zeit Online: A benchmark in itself. Bassenge between book and picture , accessed December 19, 2010
  5. ^ A b c d e f Heinz Trökes - painter, graphic artist, draftsman - exhibitions. In: troekes.com. Retrieved September 6, 2019 .
  6. a b c d Krause: Gerd Rosen Gallery. Berlin 1995, pp. 153–160: Exhibition directory of Galerie Gerd Rosen 1945–1950
  7. a b c Galerie Brusberg: Kabinett , S.11 / 12 (PDF; 7.4 MB), accessed on December 19, 2010
  8. Maike Steinkamp: The unwanted heritage , Akademie Verlag, 2008, p. 98 , accessed on December 19, 2010
  9. Review Fantasten exhibition: Max Keilson : Masked Art Reaction. To an art exhibition on Kurfürstendamm. In: Deutsche Volkszeitung , February 9, 1946
  10. Review Fantast exhibition: Hanns Theodor Flemming : Fantastic painting. A reflection on art life in Berlin. In: Nordwestzeitung , July 5, 1946
  11. ^ Exhibition catalogs : Rosen, Gerd: Almanach 1947, Berlin 1946 , accessed on December 19, 2010
  12. ^ Gallery Brockstedt: Jeanne Mammen , short biography.
  13. Kuhn, Hans. In: galerie-schrade.de. Galerie Schrade, accessed on September 6, 2019 .
  14. ^ Gerhard Moll: Biography , accessed on December 19, 2010
  15. Barheine Art Advisory »Artists» Karl Oppermann. Halberstadt, accessed on July 28, 2020 .
  16. Dietmar Lemcke website , accessed on August 20, 2017.
  17. Gerd Rosen memorial plaque