Bar-Gera collection

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Jacob and Kenda Bar-Gera in their home in Cologne (2000)
Presentation of the Bar Gera collection of the Russian avant-garde in Frankfurt am Main in 1997

The Bar-Gera Collection is an art collection owned by the couple Jacob and Kenda Bar-Gera, which contains non-conformist works of the second Russian avant-garde , which were created between 1955 and 1988.

Kenda Bar-Gera

Kenda Bar-Gera (also: Bargera ; born December 8, 1927 in Łódź as Kenda Grynberg ; died April 23, 2012 in Tel-Aviv ) was imprisoned in various concentration and labor camps after the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in September 1939 . After the liberation by the Allies in 1945, Kenda emigrated illegally to Palestine , where she was committed to the establishment of the State of Israel . While working underground in Palestine, she met her future husband Jacob Bar-Gera in 1947, whom she married in 1950. Even as a young woman she was interested in art. A picture by the painter Kahane in the new congress center in Jerusalem became a key experience for her. In 1963 she and Jacob Bar-Gera went to Germany on behalf of the Israeli state, where the Bar-Gera collection developed.

In 1997, Kenda Bar-Gera was interviewed by Michael Kühntopf for the Shoah Foundation ; the interview was filmed and is part of the global archive of the Visual History Archive .

Jacob Bar-Gera

Jacob Bar-Gera (born June 3, 1926 in Horochiw , Ukraine ; died January 17, 2003) grew up in a wealthy Jewish industrial family. In 1941, Jacob's father was shot by the Germans and he himself was able to flee the ghetto. He later founded an underground organization that set itself the task of bringing Jewish refugees to Palestine by secret routes. He emigrated there himself and joined the liberation struggle for an Israeli state. He became wealthy with the construction of private gas stations. He met his wife briefly in Lodz after the liberation in 1945 and then lost sight of them again. After various activities in Israel, he was sent to Germany in 1963, where he took his whole family with him.

In 1997 Jacob Bar-Gera was interviewed by Michael Kühntopf for the Shoah Foundation ; the interview was filmed and is part of the global archive of the Visual History Archive .

The collection

When Jacob Bar-Gera moved to Germany with his wife and family in 1963, a difficult time began for Kenda Bar-Gera. As a victim of the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi regime, it was initially very difficult for her to live in Germany. In order not to be overwhelmed by the terrible feelings of the past, she devoted herself to art. A hobby became her new purpose in life. In 1964 she opened a gallery with Antonina Gmurzynska. Due to the problematic relations between Germany and Israel, the gallery was not allowed to bear the name Bar-Gera, but was called "Galerie Gmurzynska". In the gallery they mainly supported Bauhaus artists and constructivists and artists in general who had been forgotten after the war due to their persecution during the Nazi regime. Kenda stubbornly researched the works of the first Russian avant-garde, which had been persecuted in the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and got in touch with collectors, artists and dealers in order to make this art, which had been hushed up in the Soviet Union, accessible to the Western public. She also acted as an energetic lawyer for Spanish artists who suffered under the Franco dictatorship.

In the middle of the sixties Jacob and Kenda Bar-Gera heard for the first time that in the dictatorially ruled Soviet Union another art direction apart from official socialist realism was developing. Two of the couple's Prague friends, two art historians, told them about non-conformist art for the first time. The first pictures arrived a short time later. They came through students, in embassy baggage, in suitcases with a double bottom or disguised as something completely different, for example children's picture books. The couple never had the opportunity to select works like a collector who builds his collection in a targeted manner. It was like a message in a bottle. They did not know what was coming, and what was coming had to be accepted.

It was only through personal contact and the only possible exchange of information that they became aware that they had a real, important collection of non-conformist art from 1955 to 1988.

In 1970 Ms. Bar-Gera had enough material to make an exhibition possible. But the reaction to this exhibition was limited. It was not until the early 1990s that there was a sufficiently good and, above all, noticeable response to the collection. The first exhibition in St. Petersburg, Russia, took place on Jacob's 70th birthday. This was followed by many other exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland and Israel.

Exhibitions

  • Russian Museum St. Petersburg , Photo Exhibition of The Second Russian Avantgarde from The Bar-Gera Collection, June 3 - July 10, 1996, St. Petersburg, Russia
  • The State Tretyakov Gallery Moscow , The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, July 23 - August 25, 1996, Moscow, Russia
  • Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen , The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, February - March 1997, Leverkusen, Germany
  • Erholungshaus, Kulturhaus der Bayer AG, Leverkusen , The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, February 8 - March 23, 1997, Leverkusen, Germany
  • Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop , The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, 23 May - 31 August 1997, Bottrop, Germany
  • Städel Museum Frankfurt , "The Non-Conformists, The Second Russian Avant-garde 1955-1988", The Bar-Gera Collection, September 26, 1996 - January 12, 1997, Frankfurt, Germany
  • Galleria d'Arte Moderna E Contemporanea Palazzo Forti , "L'Arte Vietata in URSS", The Bar-Gera Collection, April 7 - May 4, 2000, Verona, Italy
  • Märkisches Museum Witten , "The Second Russian Avantgarde" The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, November 12, 2000 - January 30, 2001, Witten, Germany
  • Museum of Art, Samara, Municipal Art Museum , "Photos-Documents-Pictures" The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, October 2, 2001 - November 30, 2001, Samara, Russia
  • Museum of Contemporary Art Moscow , "Photos-Documents-Pictures" The Second Russian Avantgarde 1955 - 1988, The Bar-Gera Collection, November 21, 2001 - December 2, 2001, Moscow, Russia
  • Ashdod Art Museum , Persecuted Art & Artists under totalitarian regimes in Europe during the 20th Century, The Bar-Gera Collection, June 22, 2003 - September 21, 2003, Ashdod, Israel
  • Kunstmuseum Bern , Avant-garde in the underground, Russian nonconformists from the Bar-Gera Collection, The Bar-Gera Collection, February 3, 2005 - April 24, 2005, Bern, Switzerland

literature

  • Matthias Frehner, Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler: Avant-garde in the underground. Russian nonconformists from the Bar-Gera collection. Benteli, 2005, ISBN 978-3-7165-1384-2 .
  • Funding association "International Museum for Persecuted Art-Israel eV": Persecuted Art & Artists: Bar-Gera Museum of Persecuted Art. 1st edition, DruckVerlag Kettler, 2003, ISBN 3-935019-88-2 .
  • Hans-Peter Riese, Kenda and Jacob Bar-Gera: NONconformists The second Russian avant-garde 1955-1988 Bar-Gera collection. Wienand, 1996, ISBN 3-87909-496-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1927 according to his own statement; Information in passport: 1926. Both information after interview for Shoa Foundation: USC Shoah Foundation Interview 28241 (PDF) , Visual History Archive, Transcript Freie Universität Berlin 2012 ( http://www.vha.fu-berlin.de , registration required ), P. 3f; accessed November 3, 2019.
  2. ^ Parte in the FAZ of August 25, 2012, p. 31
  3. ↑ Interview with Jacob Bar-Gera, USC Shoah Foundation Interview 28428 (PDF) , Visual History Archive, Transcript Freie Universität Berlin 2012, p. 49 ( http://www.vha.fu-berlin.de , registration required); accessed November 3, 2019.
  4. ↑ Transcription : USC Shoah Foundation Interview 28241 (PDF) , Visual History Archive, Transcript Freie Universität Berlin 2012 ( http://www.vha.fu-berlin.de , registration required); accessed November 3, 2019.
  5. ↑ Transcription : USC Shoah Foundation Interview 28428 (PDF) , Visual History Archive, Transcript Freie Universität Berlin 2012 ( http://www.vha.fu-berlin.de , registration required); accessed November 3, 2019.