Center for Persecuted Arts

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The Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen, Photo 2016: Judith Schönwiesner

The Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen is a German art museum . It is Europe's only institution that deals permanently with persecuted artists and their banned works. Their fates are investigated in permanent and changing exhibitions and the question of the causes for the persecution of artists is posed.

location

The center is located - as an independent gGmbH - in the building of the Art Museum Solingen. This is the former town hall of Gräfrath , a building in the Neuberg style built in 1907/1908 and a rear extension built in 1995/1996. It is located on a hill above the historic center of the Solingen district of Gräfrath between the federal road 224 and the corkscrew route , the Gräfrath and Bergerbrühl stops of the Solingen trolleybus 683 are within walking distance.

history

The center was founded in 2015 as a non-profit company by the Rhineland Regional Council and the Blade City of Solingen . The center was officially opened on December 8, 2015 by President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert . The idea of ​​a center for persecuted arts came from the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft in Wuppertal . The society and its chairman Hajo Jahn have worked for the establishment of such an institution for over 25 years.

Director of the Center for Persecuted Arts is Rolf Jessewitsch , who also heads the Solingen Art Museum. Jürgen Kaumkötter has been the curator since 2015 and took over the management on October 1, 2019 after Rolf Jessewitsch retired.

Collections

Works by Kurt Tuch, Milly Steger and Erich Hartmann in the Meistermannsaal (2017)

The Center for Persecuted Arts is overseen by the Community Foundation for Persecuted Arts - Else Lasker Student Center - Gerhard Schneider Art Collection . This community foundation consists of the literature collection Die burnt Dichter by the journalist Jürgen Serke (acquired by the Else Lasker Schüler Foundation Burned and Exiled Poets / Artists - for a center of persecuted arts) and part of the art collection Discovered Modernism by the collector Gerhard Tailor . On permanent loan from the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft, the Center for Persecuted Arts also houses the largest collection of original drawings by Else Lasker-Schüler outside of Israel. The collections are supplemented by works by the Solingen-born painter Georg Meistermann , who was affected by the dictatorial cultural policy of the Nazis during National Socialism. Some works by the artist and resistance fighter Ernst Walsken from the Solingen art collection are also shown in the context of persecuted art.

The temporal focus of the two collections is limited to the time of National Socialism and the GDR . In keeping with the political upheavals of that time and the associated cultural policy of both countries, the artists are now rather unknown. The center wants to remember them and at the same time bring them back into cultural history.

Temporary exhibitions

The center regularly organizes temporary exhibitions. In addition, the subject of "persecuted arts" is made accessible to a broader public in national and international collaborations. This also includes dealing with artists who are currently being persecuted.

Exhibition title
The opening exhibitions December 9, 2015 to January 24, 2016
In love with the German language.

The Odyssey of Edgar Hilsenrath

March 6, 2016 to April 10, 2016
Once upon a time there was a boomerang

Joachim Ringelnatz - The painter returns

April 29, 2016 to 17th July 2016
Jonasz Stern

Landscape after the destruction

4th August 2016 to September 25, 2016
Guest in the series of Friends of Collectors :

Three artists: Käthe Löwenthal and her sisters

November 27, 2016 to January 8, 2017
Literary images of the Holocaust.

"The Passenger" by Zofia Posmysz

(Literature exhibition in cooperation with the MOCAK )

January 27, 2017 to February 26, 2017
Ryszard Krynicki

Do we still see each other?

(Literature exhibition in cooperation with the MOCAK)

March 8, 2017 to 29th March 2017
Work of art life

Pictures, installations and objects on medicine, human dignity and hope

April 1, 2017 to 2nd July 2017
80 years ago:

The Nazi campaign " Degenerate Art " Exhibition with new acquisitions by the community foundation from federal funds

19th July 2017 to 10th September 2017
Painting and sculpture in Germany in 1936

The story of a prohibited exhibition

(An exhibition by the Hamburg State and University Library Carl von Ossietzky and the Heinrich Stegemann Art Foundation)

19th July 2017 to 10th September 2017
Against the beautiful appearance of the world

The expressionist Werner Scholz (painter)

November 26, 2017 to 4th February 2018
From Frankfurt to New York

Eric and Jula Isenburger

March 11, 2018 to April 29, 2018
Bettina Ballendat: The Bundle March 25, 2018 to April 29, 2018
A life for the burned poet - Jürgen Serke on his 80th birthday April 18, 2018 to 15th July 2018
From the darkness of dictatorship into the light of freedom

The Solingen painter Ernst Walsken on the 25th anniversary of his death

April 29, 2018 to May 13, 2018
Ninth Art - Cartooning for Peace

Cartoons about flight, displacement and human rights

(An exhibition in cooperation with Cartooning for Peace.)

June 24, 2018 to 16th September 2018
"Dearest Miss Moore - Beautiful Rose"

Rose Ausländer and Marianne Moore

(An exhibition in cooperation with the Rose-Ausländer-Gesellschaft eV, curator: Helmut Braun)

1st July 2018 to August 12, 2018

Film: KICHKA. Life is a cartoon

In March 2018, the Center for Persecuted Arts and the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow Kichka became the first documentary . Life is a cartoon premiered in Brussels . Since then, the film has been touring the places where it was made with premieres, will be shown on September 6th at the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris and was the occasion to present the diverse “ Ninth Art ” with caricature , illustration and cartoon under the broad themes of flight, displacement and human rights .

The release was the beginning of a long journey through the past into the future. The film accompanies father and son Kichka for two intensive years in Israel, Belgium and France with many interlocutors, such as Jean Plantureux (“Plantu”), the cartoonist of “Le Monde” or Beate and Serge Klarsfeld.

Kichka. Life Is a Cartoon is a film about a father-son relationship. Henri, the father (born in Brussels in 1926) is a victim and contemporary witness of the Holocaust. Michel, the son (born 1954 in Seraing / Liège), has been waiting for explanations since childhood. The film shows how the trauma of the Shoah - also unspoken - determines the life of all family members. Despite, or perhaps because of, the depressing subject, this documentary is full of ease, affection and hope.

Henri Kichka, born in Brussels in 1926, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 along with his parents and two sisters. He had to spend three years in concentration camps, his mother and sisters were murdered. His father died on the way to Buchenwald, where Henri was liberated in 1945. After the war, Henri returned to Brussels and married. The couple had four children: Hannah, Michel, Irène and Charly. The son Michel Kichka emigrated to Israel at the age of 20 , started a family and began a career as a cartoonist. In 2012 he published the graphic novel Second Generation . It was dedicated to his younger brother, who had taken his own life. The main topic, however, is the relationship between son Michel and father Henri as a victim and contemporary witness of the Holocaust . The book shows how this trauma determines the mental state of all members of a family.

Kichka reveals the dramatic potential of the cartoon as an art form; only through this art are father and son finally able to communicate with one another. The film transcends the boundaries of a graphic novel by showing how the two kichkas deal with their family history. As soon as they talk about their father's life as a contemporary witness , they overcome their speechlessness. Michel Kichka discusses the responsibilities of the second generation with Beate and Serge Klarsfeld . In dialogue with the Le Monde cartoonist Jean “ Plantu ” Plantureux, founder of “Cartooning for Peace”, the film expands its subject from the Shoah to political caricature and the role of comics as an artistic form.

Awards

In December 2015 the museum was named one of the top ten new museums in the world by The Guardian newspaper .

literature

  • Hajo Jahn (ed.): Conscience against violence. For an Else Lasker-Schüler center for the persecuted arts. Edition Künstlertreff, Wuppertal, 1999, ISBN 978-3-980309-88-2
  • Rolf Jessewitsch (Ed.): Heaven and Hell between 1918 and 1989. The burned poets. Damm and Lindlar publishing house. Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-9812268-2-9 .
  • Rolf Jessewitsch and Gerhard Schneider (eds.): Discovered modernity. Works from the Gerhard Schneider Collection. DruckVerlag Kettler GmbH. Bönen / Westphalia 2008, ISBN 978-3-941100-16-9 .
  • Christiane Ladleif and Gerhard Schneider (eds.): Modernism on the pillory. The Nazi campaign "Degenerate Art" 75 years ago. Works from the Schneider Collection. DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen / Westphalia 2012. ISBN 978-3-924436-03-2
  • Ralph Jentsch: George Grosz. Everyday Life and the Stage - Berlin 1914–1931. Edited by Rolf Jessewitsch and Marina von Assel. Solingen 2015. ISBN 978-3-936295-12-2
  • Jürgen Kaumkötter: Death doesn't have the last word. Art in the Catastrophe 1933–1945. Publishing house Galiani Berlin. 2015. ISBN 978-3-86971-103-4 .
  • Joachim Ringelnatz - The Painter Returns , Eds .: Rolf Jessewitsch and Jürgen Kaumkötter, Center for Persecuted Arts, Solingen-Gräfrath 2016, supplement to the work of Hilmar Klute : Was once a boomerang - The life of Joachim Ringelnatz , Verlag Galiani Berlin 2015. ISBN 978-3-86971-109-6
  • Jürgen Kaumkötter and Rolf Jessewitsch (eds.): Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler . Work of art life. Solingen 2017. (The exhibition catalog can only be obtained from the Center for Persecuted Arts)
  • Jürgen Kaumkötter and Rolf Jessewitsch (eds.): Work of art life. Pictures, installations and objects on medicine, human dignity and hope. Solingen 2017 (The exhibition catalog can only be obtained from the Center for Persecuted Arts)
  • Rolf Jessewitsch (Ed.): Against the beautiful appearance of the world. The expressionist Werner Scholz. Solingen 2017. (The exhibition catalog can only be obtained from the Center for Persecuted Arts)

Web links

Commons : Center for Persecuted Arts  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Visit - Center for Persecuted Arts. In: Center for Persecuted Arts. Retrieved March 22, 2016 .
  2. ^ The Collections - Center for Persecuted Arts. In: Center for Persecuted Arts. Retrieved March 22, 2016 .
  3. ^ Exhibitions - Center for Persecuted Arts. In: Center for Persecuted Arts. Retrieved March 22, 2016 .
  4. ↑ 3sat.online: harassed , ostracized, persecuted - center for persecuted arts opened. In: www.3sat.de. Retrieved March 22, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Exhibitions: Forgotten Pictures: Ringelnatz as a painter . In: The time . April 28, 2016, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed June 29, 2016]).
  6. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Pictures by Joachim Ringelnatz in the Solingen Center for Persecuted Arts | All content | DW.COM | 04/28/2016. In: DW.COM. Retrieved June 29, 2016 .
  7. ↑ MOCAK / Center for Persecuted Arts: http://www.lifeisacartoon.com/Life_is_a_Cartoon/Aktuell.html. Retrieved June 17, 2018 .
  8. ↑ KICHKA. Life is a Cartoon - Persecuted Arts Center . In: Center for the Persecuted Arts . ( purste-kuenste.de [accessed on June 17, 2018]).
  9. ↑ 10 of the best new museums , in: The Guardian, December 21, 2015, accessed May 11, 2016

Coordinates: 51 ° 12 ′ 13 ″  N , 7 ° 4 ′ 25 ″  E