Gretchen Wohlwill

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Gretchen Wohlwill (born February 27, 1878 in Hamburg ; † May 17, 1962 there ) was a painter and member of the Hamburg Secession . She was one of the German students at the Académie Matisse in Paris and developed a style of painting that was influenced by French avant - garde art. In addition to painting , graphics were a focus of her work. Persecuted by the National Socialists because of her Jewish background , she emigrated to Portugal in 1940 . After twelve years in exile , she returned to Hamburg in 1952.

Live and act

childhood and education

Gretchen Wohlwill grew up in a liberal, respected Jewish family with four siblings. She did not belong to any religious community. Her father was the chemist and historian Emil Wohlwill (1835–1912), her mother's name was Luise Nathan (1847–1919). Her brother Friedrich Wohlwill was a recognized physician.

After graduating from "Selekta", a secondary school for girls, from 1894 she attended the Valeska Röver art school in Hamburg. Your teachers were Ernst Eitner and Arthur Illies . Here she got to know the North German Impressionism promoted by Alfred Lichtwark . In 1897 she interrupted her painting studies for six months in order to “learn household chores” at her own request. (In her memories, she noted that she never regretted learning to cook.)

In 1904 and 1905 she stayed in Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande, co-founded and directed by Martha Stettler (1870-1945) and Alice Dannenberg (1861-1948) at 14 rue de la Grande-Chaumière Chaumière to continue. Her teachers were Lucien Simon and Jacques-Émile Blanche . With them she learned mainly conventional portraits and landscapes in the academically approved brown tones. They went to the Louvre together . Almost half a century later, she noted critically in her memoirs that she had missed “the essential thing about the current art events in Paris”. Modern art movements were not provided for in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. And further: “ Cézanne , van Gogh only came up to us much later. Monet , Sisley , Pissarro etc. delighted us, but we felt guilty because our revered teachers mocked them. "

Matisse and his students in the studio, 1909

In 1909/10 she traveled again to the French art metropolis to study with Henri Matisse at the so-called Académie Matisse . The “Académie” consisted of a group of mostly foreign students whom Matisse gave corrections to in an old monastery building. At the same time, the Hamburg painters Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann and Franz Nölken also met there. At that time, Wohlwill admired the French avant-garde , especially Matisse and Cézanne, whose reception would influence their later work, without any restrictions from authorities .

Art teacher and freelance artist

Back in Germany, she prepared herself for the drawing teacher exam in Berlin . Her goal as a woman in art was to stand financially on her own two feet. She succeeded in doing this by working as an art teacher at the Emilie-Wüstenfeld-Schule in Hamburg (Eimsbüttel) from 1910 onwards. Since the teaching workload lasted three days a week, she had time for her own free artistic work.

From 1912, Wohlwill took part in exhibitions in Hamburg. In 1919 she founded the Hamburg Secession together with colleagues like Anita Rée and exhibited with the group until it was dissolved in the early days of National Socialism in 1933. In 1920 she joined the Hamburg Art Association and in 1921 the German Association of Artists . She went on study trips to London (1920), to Italy with Alma del Banco in 1922 and to France with Ida Schilling the following year . In 1926 she spent some time in the artist town of Ascona .

Friendship with Bargheer

The friendship with the painter Eduard Bargheer (1901–1979) from 1927 was significant for her both personally and artistically. A lifelong collegial exchange developed, which was interrupted by the years of emigration . Until about the mid-1930s she went on a series of study trips with Bargheer to Holland , Belgium , England , Italy and Paris as well as Denmark .

Through Wohlwill's advocacy, Bargheer was accepted into the Hamburg Secession in 1928. In the same year she moved into an apartment (Flemingstrasse 3) with her sister, the music teacher and pianist Sophie Wohlwill . Her studio at Magdalenenstrasse 12 developed into a meeting place for Secession artists and other artist friends in the 1920s.

Professional success

In the twenties and early thirties, Wohlwill's works were featured in numerous exhibitions. In 1932 she got her first solo exhibition at the Hamburger Kunstverein . In 1931 she had received an order for a mural in her school from chief building director Fritz Schumacher . Good reviews in the press made it easier for her to acquire commissioned portraits. She had meanwhile made a name for herself and had become a well-known Hamburg artist.

Artistic development

In her free work, Wohlwill experimented with style innovations of the artistic avant-garde, especially in the area of ​​the still life, and painted numerous landscapes that are characterized by the juxtaposition of cubic house shapes and lush nature. Their harmonious color composition was based on Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne, although the palette had rather muted tones. While her style was still characterized by cubic - expressive forms in the early twenties , she later turned to the New Objectivity . In 1930 she worked in the newly developed style of the Hamburg Secession, a flat painting style with linear elements.

persona non grata

As a modern artist and as a German from a Jewish family, Wohlwill was already exposed to hostility in the nationalist press during the Weimar Republic . When the NSDAP took power, it was forced on April 25, 1933 to resign from the Hamburg artists' community. In the summer of that year, she was dismissed from school. The artist then retired to Hamburg-Finkenwerder , which was still a village at the time , and gave private lessons. There she had a studio built at a right angle as an extension to Bargheer's studio next to his Nesskate. She withdrew entirely to her painting. In 1936 she was also excluded from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and banned from painting. Ary Bergen painted over Wohlwill's murals in the Emilie-Wüstenfeld-Schule with Nazi motifs. In the same year, she and Bargheer took a motorcycle trip to Denmark , and also traveled to Lisbon , where her brother Friedrich Wohlwill , a pathologist at Eppendorf University Hospital before the Nazi era , and his family were already in exile. In 1938 she also traveled to her relatives in Portugal.

Emigration and exile

After long hesitation and after she had let her first exit visa expire, Gretchen Wohlwill emigrated to Portugal on March 15, 1940 to avoid deportation to a concentration camp. There she lived on the meager income of fabric painting, pocket sewing and German language lessons. The National Socialists had robbed the 62-year-old of all her reserves before leaving. At the beginning of 1941, their transport elevator (a kind of mini container) was broken into in the Port of Hamburg and the contents, including 120 pictures, were sold in Hamburg. Due to the material deprivation in Portugal and also the feeling of isolation, she was often plagued by illnesses in exile .

In retrospect, she described the war years in Lisbon as the hardest time of her life. At first she lived in her brother's house, which was not an easy situation for the artist, who was always concerned about her independence. Later she was able to move into her own simple apartment, but could not work as an artist.

She did not return to painting until after 1945, and there were artistic successes and recognition, such as the Portuguese art prize “Prêmio Francisco da Holanda” (1948 and 1952). Financially, this changed little for the artist, only she was now allowed to enter the houses of her students through the front entrance instead of having to use the servants' entrance.

Even if “the country, the climate and the city of Lisboa ” had always remained alien to her, the years in Portugal had influenced Wohlwill's color palette. The southern light brightened their colors, they became bright and colorful. She depicted her Portuguese environment with lively, powerful motifs.

Return to Hamburg

In 1952, Wohlwill returned to Hamburg at the age of 75, partly out of material need, partly out of longing for his old friends. Of the 64 artists who emigrated during the Nazi era , only three more came back to the Hanseatic city, namely Clara Blumfeld , Arie Goral and Arnold Fiedler . The prospect of a future with the few family members who had survived the Nazi barbarism, the closeness of the old friend Bargheer and a modest teacher pension favored Wohlwill's rapprochement with Hamburg. In 1953, the cultural authority brokered an apartment for her in the new Grindel skyscrapers , and Wohlwill resumed friendship with Willem Grimm and other former secession colleagues. She also became artistically active again. In 1959 she wrote to an acquaintance: “To take a break from painting, I now draw nudes once a week, a good model; I enjoy it very much, haven't done it for years. "

In 1959 she was made an honorary member of the professional association of visual artists in Hamburg. Shortly before Gretchen Wohlwill's death, her colleague Else Weber painted a large-format portrait of her, which the artist shows in her studio, surrounded by pictures. The portrait is in private hands. Gretchen Wohlwill died on May 17, 1962 in Hamburg.

Memorials

Gretchen Wohlwill's tombstone in the women's garden at Ohlsdorf cemetery

A commemorative plaque at the Emilie-Wüstenfeld-Gymnasium in Hamburg (Eimsbüttel) commemorates Gretchen Wohlwill, her dismissal from school in 1933, her successful emigration and her return to Hamburg. Her Jewish colleague Martha Behrend, who was murdered in the Minsk ghetto , is also remembered . In the sense of reparation, her murals, which had been painted over in the stairwell of the school, were exposed again in 1993.

Gretchen Wohlwill's tombstone is in the women's garden at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg.

Works in public collections (selection)

  • Wirtshausgarten, oil / canvas, 70 × 85 cm, Hamburger Kunsthalle
  • Elbe landscape, oil / canvas, 58 × 72.4 cm, Altonaer Museum , Hamburg
  • Coffee garden on the Elbe, oil on canvas, 50.2 × 61 cm, Altonaer Museum, Hamburg
  • Antique still life, oil on canvas, 64.3 × 74.5 cm, Hamburger Kunsthalle
  • Autumn bouquet, oil on canvas, 60.4 × 73.4 cm Hamburger Kunsthalle
  • Factory in Finkenwerder, oil / canvas, 64 × 74 cm, Museum of Hamburg History
  • Dike work in Finkenwerder, o.A., Altonaer Museum, Hamburg
  • Men digging in Finkenwerder an der Elbe (land reclamation), 1937/1938, oil on canvas (fragment), Altonaer Museum, Hamburg
  • The Card Players, oil on canvas, 70 × 90 cm, Collection Hamburger Sparkasse, permanent loan to the Museum of Art and Commerce, Hamburg
  • Ilfracombe, oil / canvas, 60 × 70 cm, Schleswig-Holstein State Museum, Gottorf Castle

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1932: Special exhibition at the Kunstverein Hamburg
  • 1937: Exhibition in the Hamburg Jewish Cultural Association
  • 1956: Exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle
  • 1962: Memorial exhibition in the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg
  • 1989: Jewish artists of the Hamburg Secession, in Bonn and Hamburg ( Altona Museum )
  • 1995: Three female painters from the Hamburg Secession. Alma del Banco, Anita Rée, Gretchen Wohlwill. BAT art foyer, Hamburg
  • 2002: The great inspiration, part II, Kunstmuseum Ahlen / Westf.
  • 2006: Avant-garde artists in Hamburg between 1890 and 1933. Hamburger Kunsthalle
  • 2007: Fled from Germany. Hamburg artist in exile. 1933-1945. Museum of Hamburg History , Hamburg
  • 2009: Art exhibition Gretchen Wohlwill, August 30th to October 3rd, parish hall of the Blankenese Church on the market, Hamburg
  • 2016/2017: stubbornness. GEDOK artists in the Hamburg Secession, Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg , October 21, 2016 to October 1, 2017

swell

  • Gretchen Wohlwill, memoirs of a Hamburg painter. Edited by Hans-Dieter Loose . Society of Book Friends in Hamburg, Hamburg 1984.

literature

  • Maike Bruhns , Brigitte Rosenkranz: Gretchen Wohlwill - A Jewish painter from the Hamburg Secession. Hamburg 1989 (with catalog raisonné).
  • Fled from Germany. Hamburg artist in exile. 1933-1945. Exhibition cat. Hamburg 2007.
  • The Hamburg Secession, 1919–1933. Exhibition cat. Herold Gallery, Hamburg, 1992.
  • Peter Kropmanns, Carina Schäfer: Private academies and studios in Paris at the turn of the century . In: The great inspiration. German artists in the Académie Matisse, vol. 3 . Art Museum Ahlen / Westf. 2004, ISBN 3-89946-041-3 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name, February 27 to May 1, 2000).
  • Avant-garde artists in Hamburg between 1890 and 1933. Exhibition catalog, Hamburger Kunsthalle 2006.
  • Friederike Weimar: The Hamburg Secession. 1919-1933. Fischerhude 2003.
  • The new rump. Lexicon of visual artists from Hamburg, Altona and the surrounding area. Ed .: Rump family. Revised new edition of Ernst Rump's dictionary . Supplemented and revised by Maike Bruhns, Wachholtz, Neumünster 2013, ISBN 978-3-529-02792-5 , p. 518 f.
  • Wohlwill, Gretchen , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 390

Web links

Commons : Gretchen Wohlwill  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date according to the birth certificate, other sources mention November 27, 1878 as the date of birth, see ( discussion: Gretchen Wohlwill # birthday )
  2. ↑ Anne of Villiez: Wohlwill, Friedrich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 375-376 .
  3. ↑ Bernd Holthusen: Inspiration and Retreat - Gretchen Wohlwill - painter on Finkenwerder. In: De Kössenbitter. Official newsletter of the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e. V., April 2018, pp. 18-19.
  4. ↑ The grave of Gretchen Wohlwill. In: knerger.de. Klaus Nerger, accessed June 25, 2019 .
  5. ^ Art exhibition Gretchen Wohlwill
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personal data
SURNAME Good will, Gretchen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 17th May 1962
Place of death Hamburg