Der Felsendichter vom feuerspeienden Berg. Gert Wollheim (1894 Dresden – 1974 New York).

In the organizer's words:

Gert Wollheim studied at the Grand Ducal School of Fine Arts in Weimar from 1911 to 1913. There he took nude and landscape classes with Carl Melchers and Fritz Mackensen and studied with Otto Pankok, Peter Röhl, Carl Lohse, Heinrich Stassen and Otto Herbig. In 1914, he followed his former professor Albin Egger-Linz to Klausen (Tyrol) to pursue his monumental figure style. In the following years, Wollheim lived in an artists' commune in the countryside, founded - together with Otto Pankok - an artists' colony in Remels (East Frisia) and moved - again together with Otto Pankok - to Düsseldorf in 1919, where they joined Adolf de Haer in an art project around the literary magazine "Neues Rheinland". Max Ernst and Otto Dix also belonged to this group. In 1920, he became a founding member of the artists' association "Das Junge Rheinland" and editor and contributor to the magazines "Der Aktivistenbund" and "Das Ey" (after the art dealer Johanna Ey). Wollheim was also a co-founder of the workers' housing estate "Freie Erde" in Düsseldorf-Eller.

In 1921, he married the pianist Leni Stein, to whom he dedicated a "bridal portfolio" with 12 lithographs. In 1922, together with Adolf Uzarski, he initiated the "1st International Art Exhibition" in Düsseldorf and the 1st Congress of the Union of Progressive International Artists. In 1924 he created his oil painting "Farewell to Düsseldorf", one of his most famous paintings to this day. In 1925 Wollheim became a member of the November Group in Berlin.

During the National Socialist era, Gert Wollheim was persecuted as a "degenerate artist". In 1937, twenty of Wollheim's paintings were confiscated and partially destroyed from the Berlin National Gallery (Kronprinzen-Palais), the art collections of the city of Düsseldorf, the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne and the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld as part of the Nazi "Degenerate Art" campaign.

Gert Wollheim managed to escape to Paris and later to Switzerland. In exile in Paris in 1937, he was one of the founders of the "Deutscher Künstlerbund", which was renamed the "Freier Künstlerbund" ("Union des artistes libres") in 1938. He was the partner of dancer Tatjana Barbakoff. He was arrested in 1939, but was able to escape in 1942 and lived in hiding in the Pyrenees.
He finally managed to emigrate to New York in 1947 with the help of the International Rescue Committee.

Gert Wollheim's works have not been exhibited for over 20 years. This is unusual in view of his artistic significance and complexity, but can also be explained by the distribution of his work, a large part of which is privately owned. Our exhibition will largely draw on this private collection. Many works will be exhibited or published for the first time.

Price information:

Free admission for children and young people up to and including the age of 18 and pupils of general education schools up to the age of 20.