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until 22.01. | #3188ARTatBerlin | Salongalerie Die Möwe shows from 16th October 2021 the exhibition Fantasies in shape and color with works by the painters Erwin Hahs, Curt Lahs, Heinrich Wildemann, Gerhart Hein and Erich Franke unter the triad and interplay of color, shape and fantasy. Three sculptures with elementary charisma by Michael Schoenholtz, one of the most important sculptors of his generation, continue the abstract play of forms in marble and shell limestone.
The five painters of classical modernism were influenced by expressionism, avant-garde artist groups like the Bauhaus and the Breslau Art Academy and, like Erwin Hahs, Curt Lahs and Heinrich Wildemann, helped shape the following generation of artists as professors in the Weimar Republic and after 1945. During National Socialism, Hahs, Lahs, Wildemann and Hein were exposed to marginalization that threatened their existence. In addition, their art was defamed as “degenerate” and removed from museums.
In the course of their artistic work, all five painters largely detached themselves from the objective motif. For them, colors and shapes became essential means of expression. The paintings in the exhibition show harmoniously coordinated as well as strongly contrasting colors. With a strictly or loosely guided brush, melodic swings, floating individual forms or accurate graphic structures are created. The paintings and works on paper depict reality in a subjective and poetic way. They inspire you to see the world differently: to recognize it as a miracle of shapes and colors. The sculptor Michael Schoenholtz, who studied and taught at the Berlin Art School, dealt – starting in the 1960s – with the human body, which he increasingly fragmented and abstracted into block-like forms in the course of his work.
Erwin Hahs | Goldene Linien | 1932 | Öl, Lack, Goldbronze,
Emaillelack auf Papier | 48 x 31,5 cm
Erwin Hahs (1887-1970), , who taught as a professor at the Burg Giebichenstein School of Applied Arts, developed a meditative, abstract visual language at the end of the 1920s. During this ten-year creative period, from which, among other things, “Goldene Linien” from 1932 can be seen, he experimented with industrial paints. He was fascinated by the fact that the lacquer “dissolves the form and its beauty lies in this wonderful lightness of its own.”
Curt Lahs | o.T. | 1920er Jahre | Tempera | 23,9 x 29,6 cm
For Curt Lahs (1893-1958), who in his early years belonged to the avant-garde artist group “Das Junge Rheinland” and exhibited in the legendary gallery of “Mutter Ey” in 1921, the boundaries between representational and abstract painting hardly existed; sometimes both directions coexist in his works. After 1945 in particular, the painter created predominantly abstract pictures, which are characterised by a lyrical attitude to life. In the compositions from the 1950s that are shown in the exhibition, Lahs trusts entirely in the expressive power of moving forms and the euphony of colours.
Heinrich Wildemann | o.T. | Aquarell | 1942 | 24 x 29,6 cm
Heinrich Wildemann (1904-1964) received important impulses for his artistic development from the Expressionists of the “Brücke”; he also had a close friendship with Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. After the Second World War, Wildemann was acquainted with painters such as Willi Baumeister, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Max Ackermann and Fritz Winter, whose abstract works marked a new artistic beginning in Germany. On Baumeister’s recommendation, Wildemann was appointed Baumeister’s successor and professor of painting at the Stuttgart Art Academy in 1955. Commenting on his development, the artist said: “My career led me from Expressionism via Cubism to the abstract […], based on my own experience and without any outside influence”. In the exhibition, watercolours from the 1940s are shown.
Gerhart Hein | o.T. | 1956 | Mischtechnik | 45,5 x 55,5 cm
Gerhart Hein (1910-1998), whose artistic talent had been discovered by the expressionist Otto Mueller, studied at the Breslau Art Academy from 1929. After the war and captivity, he again entered a phase of free creativity. In the mid-1950s he dissolved figuration in his works. Forms inspired by Cubism led further to abstract structures of geometric lines delimiting areas of color. In the mid-1950s he dissolved figuration in his works. Forms inspired by Cubism led further to abstract structures of geometric lines delimiting areas of colour. Hein called these structures “imaginary substance”.
Erich Franke | Circus | 1937 | Gouache | 29 x 41,5 cm
Erich Franke (1911-2008) graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Wiesbaden and, influenced by the art movements of the 1920s and 30s, put an early emphasis on abstract art. Theatre and music, which he dealt with professionally as a stage designer, enriched his artworks with spatial depth and dance-like dynamics. These references become visible in the gouaches “Circus” from 1937 and “Kultischer Ort” from 1957, among others, which lead the viewer into the artist’s inner reality.
Michael Schoenholtz (1937-2019) was primarily a stone sculptor. Schoenholtz corresponded to the heaviness and massiveness of the stone with a reduced formal language that concentrated on the essential. It gives his figures a dignified aura and refers to Schoenholtz ’artistic role models – the sculptures of the Aztecs and Khmer. Parallel to his sculptural work, he also created a rich set of drawings.
Opening: Saturday 16 October 2021, from noon to 6 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 16 October 2021 until Saturday, 22 January 2022
To the Gallery
Exhibition FarbFormFantasie – Salongalerie Die Möwe | Moderne Kunst – Exhibitions Galerien Berlin | ART at Berlin
