Rudolf Springer (gallery owner)

Rudolf Springer, 1975

Gravestone Rudolf Springer

Rudolf Springer (born April 9, 1909 in Berlin ; † June 2, 2009 there ) was a German art dealer and gallery owner . From 1948 to 1998 he ran the Springer Gallery in Berlin.

Life

Rudolf Springer came from the extensive publishing family whose founder was Julius Springer . Rudolf Springer is the son of Julius Springer the Elder. J. and brother of the New York publisher Bernhard Springer. As a young man he completed an apprenticeship as a technical businessman. In the 1930s he worked for the insurance company Allianz. During his military service, his Jewish roots - his great-grandfather Julius had converted to Protestantism - remained undiscovered. In France, Rudolf Springer was able to establish contacts with the Resistance movement , which earned him great recognition after the war. In 1947 Springer returned to Berlin. Until the summer of 1948 he worked as artistic director and managing director of the Gerd Rosen gallery . In December 1948 he opened his own gallery in his parents' house in Berlin-Zehlendorf , which he moved to Kurfürstendamm in 1950. The gallery found its final home in the nearby Fasanenstrasse at the end of the 1960s . In 1998 it closed its doors there. Rudolf Springer was married to the artist Christa Dichgans for the fourth time and lived in Berlin-Zehlendorf. He found his final resting place in the Julius Springer family grave in the Zehlendorf Onkel-Tom-Straße cemetery . (Field 013-90)

Gallery activity

At first, well-known Berlin artists such as Hans Uhlmann , Heinz Trökes and Werner Heldt predominated in Galerie Springer's program . At the beginning of the 1950s, Galerie Springer initially clearly turned to art from the French region. Springer showed u. a. Works by André Masson , Joan Miró , Alexander Calder , Henri Laurens , Hans Bellmer , Max Ernst , Hans Arp and Wols . Over time, Springer also exhibited internationally known German artists such as Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Willi Baumeister, and again and again completely unknown ones. In doing so, he discovered artists such as Gerhard Altenbourg , Harry Kramer and Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern for the public. In the 1960s, Springer helped to internationalize the art market. Among those exhibited by him are names such as George Rickey , Arnulf Rainer , Fritz Köthe , George Baker, Rolf Szymanski , Waldemar Grzimek , Marwan , Victor Vasarely , Christian Ludwig Attersee , David Hockney , William Copley , Jorge Castillo , James Lee Byars , Günter Brus , KH Hödicke , Armando , Per Kirkeby , Ina Barfuss , Thomas Wachweger, Rosemarie Trockel , Bernd Koberling , Antonius Höckelmann and Dieter Appelt . Springer worked closely with the Cologne-based gallery owner Michael Werner, particularly when it came to working with Georg Baselitz , Markus Lüpertz , AR Penck and Jörg Immendorff . Werner completed a short apprenticeship at Galerie Springer in the early 1960s. With the artist and art publisher Johannes Gachnang , Rudolf Springer founded the publishing house Gachnang & Springer in 1983.

Springer's services to the cultural life of his hometown Berlin can hardly be overestimated. His gallery was the only one that existed continuously between the Berlin blockade and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For several decades, Galerie Springer played a key role in the artistic exchange between (West) Berlin and the international art world. Many internationally known artists were shown for the first time at exhibitions in the Springer Gallery in Berlin.

literature

• Berlinische Galerie. Museum educational service. Eckhard Gillen. Dieter Schmidt (Ed.), Zone 5. Art in the four-sector city 1945 to 1951, Berlin 1989.
• Johannes Gachnang, Rebeka Ewa Wolfowski (eds.), Das Loch. Homage to Rudolf Springer, Bern. Berlin 1999.
• Ingo Brunzlow, The Rudolf Springer Gallery. Art trade and exhibition business in post-war Berlin 1948–1961, Master's thesis at Freie Universität Berlin 2004.
• Gallery Contemporary Fine Arts (Ed.), Rudolf Springer. Marchand d'art, né 1909, exhibition catalog Berlin 2007.

Movie

In 2008 the documentary film Why do you like pictures? - The art dealer Rudolf Springer by Angelika Margull.

proof

1. ↑ Why do you like pictures? - The art dealer Rudolf Springer in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Springer in the catalog of the German National Library