Expressionism and the Pohl Colle

As surprising as it is to find an art collection of this magnitude on the campus of a small university, it is even more surprising to recognize it as a survey collection of German Expressionism. While all collections betray the preferences of the collectors, this one also indicates the influences that came to bear on a young woman from Milwaukee, La Vera Pohl. It documents her relationship with the artist, Hans Thuar, with whom she studied, as well as her own sensitivities towards works of the Expressionist movement. During the 1930s and again in the 1950s, she bought the bulk of her collection from the best galleries (Voemel and Moeller), participated in auctions at Lempertz (Cologne) and Hauswedell (Hamburg) among others, and acquired works directly from the artists or their heirs. In short, she had clear concepts of what she wanted – limited only by the price and the availability of works answering her preferences at the time.

Pohl thus showed an interest in Expressionism when there were still relatively few in American who recognized its artistic importance. It is obvious that she was very aware that Expressionism never was a movement, not a style, the roots of which developed in two different years and places.

In 1905 in Dresden, four architectural students, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erick Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Fritz Bleyl (who soon was replaced by Max Pechstein), formed the artist group Die Bruke (The Bridge). They quit architecture because it was too bound to the prevailing historicism and believed that the visual arts would provide them with the freedom of expression that

Influenced by each other and by their discovery of van Gogh, Gauguin, and the Fauves, as well as an appreciation of Edvard Munch and the arts of the non-western world, they were driven by the wish to make the arts respond to what they called an “inner necessity.” In a manifesto announcing the formation of their group, they stated: “As youth, we carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and movement.” With this emotional perception of life, they created a “new” art. Along with painting, their greatest achievements were found in their graphic works. The group Die Brucke dissolved in 1912 after the individuals moved to Berlin and found their worn stylistic forms.

In 1911, another most important part of the Expressionist movement began in Munich where, under the commanding influence of Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) was founded. Its historically greatest achievement was the publication of the Blaue Reiter Almanach, which contained the bravest and most influential statements concerning the new arts. Contributions included individual essays by the two editors, Kandinsky and Marc, and by the composers Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas von Hartmann. The publication also included an impressive number of illustrations, representing an intriguing sampling of the art that inspired the editors: not only works by Picasso and Cézanne and Brucke artists, but reproductions of works from other cultures and other times, as well as children’s drawings and folk art. One of the important contributors to the Almanach

was the Rhenish artist August Mache, who was also the friend of Hans Thuar, the artist who played such an important role in the formation of the Pohl Collection. Mache’s influence on all German artists was enormous, despite his death in the first World War, which also claimed Marc and a number of other Expressionists.

The war, in fact, interrupted the careers of most of the artists. The Expressionist movement was held together by the belief that the new arts would be able to change the public’s perception and thus able to influence society to turn away from the crass authoritarianism and dominating materialism of the period prior to the war. The earlier chauvinistic belief of the general public that this war would not only be the “the war to end all wars” but would, by itself, create a better society faded quickly as its horrors became obvious. The list of the dead and the maimed grew, and, by 1916, the mood in Germany had changed: hunger stalked the streets of the large cities, the first strikes took place, and the overwhelming strength of the Allies had become obvious. In 1918, Germany collapsed. Haiser Wilhelm and the diverse kings and dukes resigned, removing themselves into exile as the new German Republic was proclaimed.

The third phase of the Expressionist movement began at this time. By then, at least a part of the public has begun to react more favorably to the new forms, the brighter colors, and especially to the new graphic arts, among which the woodcut was the preferred medium.

One last segment within the movement requires mention: the foundation of the Bauhaus Weimar in 1919 under the architect Walter Gropius. The Bauhaus was a modern art school in which some of the outstanding artists of this period-among them Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Oskar Schlemmer-collaborated in the new educational task. The goal was to train artists to contribute to a modern society. It is no wonder that the influence of the Bauhaus became worldwide.

No mention has been made of the other artistic aspects of the Expressionist movement. The poets and writers has begun to form groups about 1910 where they read their new poetry. This poetry manifested not only new forms by also dealt with new content. Here, too, the belief dominated that society had to change, that the individual hat to look at life differently. In a short time the theater was also transformed; there were new revolutionary plays, staged by new directors who made the set-designers (most of them Expressionist painters) true collaborators. Music similarly saw enormous changes for which the name Arnold Schoenberd stands as proof. A new form of dance was developed, connected with eh names of Laban as the theoretician and Mary Wigman as the outstanding dancer. A few extraordinary films of this period, of which The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is still best known, were clearly and closely connected with the Expressionist literature and all the arts, disposing of the academic traditions of the period prior to the war, and replacing those traditions with a new and fervent belief that innovative forms of artistic expression would create a new and better society.

To identify and explain the end of the Expressionist movement presents a major problem. Art history has traditionally concentrated on discovering the first, the latest, the newest, and has taken for granted that an “older” style simply vanishes. It has rarely been acknowledged that is a new thought, a new vision which forms a new style or movement and thus a new excitement and challenge. An older style vanishes when the society changes its outlook on life and considers the old forms either boring or-as in the case of Expressionists-too emotionally demanding. The end of a style or movement is there fore tied to a change in the response by the public that, in turn, causes artist to abandon an earlier phase of their works or adopt a new aesthetic vision. One transformation is as important as the other and it requires a more comprehensive analysis than this essay can accommodate.

While a final statement concerning the end of Expressionism cannot be attempted, the chronology of the style can be summarized. The Expressionists movement began in 1905 in Dresden; it gained its second important impulse in 1911 in Munich; it saw a significant change in form as well as content during the First World War and became the dominating artistic form immediately after the conclusion of the war in 1918 and 1919. it reached its end about 1925 when the catastrophic inflation in Germany caused artists to abandon their hope that art would and could change society, when the ecstatic forces which had characterized much of the new arts were simply no longer acceptable to the majority of the people. It is not surprising that the succeeding artistic style was one of precise, pitiless realism, called Die Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity).

The Pohl Collection embraces the whole of Expressionist movement. Hardly any of the found artists of the movement are missing-although the works in the collection are not necessarily the most typical for either the artist or for the specific periods. Ehen Pohl began to collect, many of the artistically most important works had either been confiscated and sold by the German Nazi government or had been destroyed in the unrelenting drive against forms that the dictatorship had labeled “degenerate”. Those works still available after the Second World War, When Pohl made a conscious effort to focus her collection, reached prices that had been unheard of before. Some had become extremely rare, making it all the more fascinating to see what Pohl was able to bring together. Since it is impossible to the given space to comment on each of the works or even on each artist represented in the collection, only a very small number of especially remarkable works can be mentioned. Special attention will be given to the collection’s print portfolios, which present in themselves a cross-section view of the movement and its immediate aftermath.

Chronologically, the earliest of these portfolios it the SEMA-Mappe of 1912. in 1911-the same year in which the Blaue Reiter group held its first exhibition at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich-another group of artists had formed to express their dissatisfaction with the general direction of official artists’ organization. The artists of SEMA (meaning The Sign) declared that they were going to bring all the arts together, thus pronouncing on of the goals so many of the Expressionists considered as the idea; the Gesamthunstwerk, a total work of art, a concept that the Romantics of the 19^th century had envisioned. Poetry and music and the visual arts, so the theories went, were after all only expressions of the same ideas in different artistic forms. The center of the SEMA group was the painter Karl Caspar. He later became one of the founding member of Munich’s new Secession (Die Neue Muncher Sezession) and on of the artists who attempted to revitalized Christian art. Other SEMA members included Caspar’s wife Maria Caspar-Filser, art critic Wilhelm Michel, and painters Klee, Alfred Kubin, Max Oppenheimer (known as Mopp), Erwin Scharff, Robert Genin, Egon Schiele, and others. In his diary, Klee remarked that the group got together a few times and shared the opinion that El Greco was a great artist (he was just being rediscovered at this time as most than a astigmatic artist) and the information that every member was struggling financially.

Dr. Richard Landauer’s publishing house, Delphin Verlag, in conjunction with the Galerie Thannhouser, was able to obtain 14 original graphics from the group after enough subscribers had been formed. Most of the works-and the artists-were not “typically” Expressionist but the portfolio gives an overview of works by those artists who were attempting to find new and more convincing forms. Many of the prints must therefore be seen as examples of the overwhelming simultaneity of the stylistic directions which made the first quarter of the 20^th century such as exciting period. Most of the roots of our contemporary arts are found in the creations of this time.

More convincing were the prints that appeared in the various portfolios called Die Schaffenden (The Creative Ones); these portfolios formed a center of Expressionist endeavors at the end of the war. These portfolios were of great significance for the wider acceptance of Expressionism in Germany. Originally they were an off-shoot of the art journal Das Kunstblatt, which Paul Westheim had founded during the middle of the war, in January 1917. The publisher Gustav Kiepenheuer, encouraged by the famous architect Henry can de Velde, had decided that the Expressionist artists needed their own publication to confront the more established, and thus more conservative, art journals. Thus, Expressionism found defenders in editor and publisher, and the Kinstblatt added an original graphic work each issued (continued until the 10^th issue of the fourth year) which not only publicized the various artists but also encouraged the concept of collecting graphics by individuals. To further these goals, Kiepenheuer published a special edition of 100 to which signed original graphic works were added, thus providing two prints with each issue. Man important Expressionist artists were represented, as well as some who were only beginning their artistic careers.

In 1918, Westhiem and Kiepenheuer decided to widen the circle of graphic collectors by publishing Die Schaddenden portfolios of ten original signed prints in a numbered edition of 125. the title permitted the widest possible selection of artists. In its advertisement, the publisher correctly stated that all artists of the time created graphic works, regardless of their main occupation as painters or as sculptors. Short introductory texts were included as a means to introduce the artists.

Kubin, a close friend of the artists of the Blaue Reiter, was one of the most outstanding draughts-men and visual tellers of mysterious tales. Haunted by periodic nervous disorders, the artist (influenced by the symbolistic works of Max Klinger) created a large oeuvre of dark and often frightening works. His fantastic novel Die andere Seite (The Other Side), which he first published in 1909, contains an autobiographical introduction which, with his later prose, provides a fascinating introduction to his life and his work. The source of the Corpse Washed Ashore could have been a newspaper report of some tale.

Quite different in temperament and artistic direction was Mense, whose two prints are typical of the religious subject matter that fascinated so many of the younger artists at the end of the war. Mense was actually a much more lyrical, colorful painter who was active in a large number of important Expressionist organizations, including the Novembergruppe, a radical artists’ association in Berlin which was founded in 1919. his works were also included in the first exhibit of the Rhenish Expressionists in 1914the lithograph Canal by Kerschbaumer is one of the relatively few graphic works by this artist who was a friend of Keckel, Kaus, and Otto Herbig. He served with them in a Red Cross unit in Belgium during the war and collaborated on a “collective” Christmas-triptych for the waiting room of the field-hospital. Kerschbaumer was not really and Expressionist since he strove to reach a formal order based on Cézanne's concepts.

The second portfolio of the second year of Die Schaffenden as dedicated to illustrations of the works by the great Russian writer Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881). Dostoyevsky’s works were published in Germany in 1907, and his influence on the Expressionists was extraordinary. The list of names of artists who shoes scenes from the works of Dostoyevsky for their subject matter is long and distinguished. In Die Schaffenden, Westheim also published illustrations of Dostoyevsky by Vlast, Vladislav Hofmann, Gleichmann, Carl Hofer, Alfred Walter Lomnitz, Fritz Schaedler, Kubin, and Richard Janthur. Only Janthur’s print of the cloister scene from Brothers Karamazov is in the Pohl Collection. Janthur had formed with Meidner and Jakob Steinhardt a short-lived group which they had called Die Pathetiker (The Exalted Ones). Probably the most ecstatic of the “second generation” groups, its single exhibit at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin had nevertheless a great influence on their contemporaries.

Only a few works of the later portfolios of Die Schaffenden are in the Pohl Collection. Of the second year (fourth portfolio) only Rudolf Grossmann is represented with the hand-colored lithograph, Boxers. Grossmann was not really an Expressionist. He was rather a visual reporter whose many quickly conceived scenes of everyday life and portrait sketches of the famous were for a while highly regarded, as were his many illustrations for various books by contemporary writers.

By 1921, Westheim had widened the circle of artists and had begun to include those who could not be counted among the Expressionists. Many prints of the third year of the publication, however, have found their way into the Pohl Collection. An important lithograph of a nude by the famous sculpture Alexander Archipenko and a hand-colored lithograph by Otto Mueller were both published in the first portfolio in 1921.Archipencko was one of the first sculptors who translated Cubism-in a very personal form-into the third dimension. Otto Mueller was one of the early members of Die Brule. Mueller’s subject matter never changed; he was enamored with the simplicity and angular beauty of the gypsies whom he depicted in many painting and graphic works. He was later professor at the Academy in Breslau (now Wroclaw), where he worked together with Oskar Moll, Oskar Schlemmer, Johannes Molzahn, Georg Muche, and Mense, among others. Mueller was the most lyrical of artists associated with the Expressionists.

Genin, who also represented in the SEMA portfolio, had two etchings in the second portfolio of the third year: Werbung (Courting) and Liebespaar (Lovers), both of 1922. He was a member of Munich’s New Secession, exhibited at the Galerie Thannhauser and became well-known though his portfolios, among them Die Frau (The Women) of 1915 and Skizzen und Erinnerungen (Sketches and Remembrances) of 1920. One of the “forgotten” artists, he lived for a while in Ascona, Switzerland, settled in Paris, moved back to Russia, where he had been born, and in 1943 committed suicide on Moscow. His works, exhibited in Esslingen in 1969, had not been seen in 1928.

The linoleum-cut Kirmes (Fair) by Herman F. Bieling, a sculptor as well as a painter who was born and lived in The Netherlands, exemplified the many foreigners who Die Schaffenden presented in the later issues. It had become more and more difficult to obtain important works by the German Expressionists. Some had reached a popularity that prevented them from participating in this less than lucrative activity. Others were changing their styles and were not longer considered typical of contemporary artistic developments.

In 1924, one more series of portfolios was published by the Marées-Gesellschaft, the Ganymed-Mappe, examples of which are included in the Pohl Collection. The Marées-Gesellschaft had been founded in 1916 by the important art critic Julius Meier-Graefe. Its prints were published by the Piper publishing house, which also published Blaue Reiter Almanach and the famous theoretical text by Wassily Kandinsky, Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (Considering the Spiritual in Art). It was by far, a more conservative series of portfolios which appeared under the signatures of the Marées-Gesellschaft and the Ganymed-Mappe. Although a print by Heckel (a colored woodcut), and etching by Grossman, and an untitled woodcut by Kandinsky were included, the portfolio was not devoted expressly to Expressionism. In 1924, when the first Ganymed portfolio appeared, Expressionism had lost most of its appeal and therefore its collectors. Except for Caspar and Lovis Corinth, the other contributors to this portfolio remained rather unknown; none of them has particularly prominent place in the history of the graphic arts of this period.

From this account it may appear as if these graphic series are the most important and valuable parts of the collection. Although their presence indicates Pohl’s recognition of the importance of the graphic arts of Germany, this conclusion would certainly be misleading. These series were singled out because they, better than any of the more singular works by an individual artists, provide a concept of the scope and circumference of Expressionism and the arts in the period between 1905 and 1925. The single works which Pohl acquired meshed perfectly with the stylistic concerns displayed in the contents of the portfolio series. To prove this cohesiveness, one need only look at a few of the works in order to establish the extraordinary value that the Pohl Collection presents as a style collection. Of the Bruke artists, there are additional works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, including a woodcut of 1911 with the title Acrobatic Dance. This work provides a fine thematic comparison with the early Heckel woodcut of The Handstand. Other works by Kirchner include a color woodcut of 1926 of an earlier self-portrait; a watercolor of the same period showing a Swiss city with its peaceful river and moving boats; and, finally, a color woodcut of a house. All four of these works came from the estate of the artist, who committed suicide in 1938, deeply dismayed because the Nazi government of Germany had declared him, as well as most of the other Expressionists “degenerate”.

The three watercolors by Schmidt-Rottluff included in the collection will require further study, since the dates of these works remain slightly uncertain. The portrait of a prisoner of war of the Russians, done in 1918, and the House in a Park need to be placed securely in the oeuvre of the artist, while the Herdsman of 1925 can probably be located in one of the vacation areas where the Bruke painters frequently spent their summers.

Pechstein is represented with a sketch, Woman with a large hat, of 1910, and a drawing of 1912 Bathers at the Beach, one of the themes treated frequently by all Brucke artists. In 1914, Pechstein traveled to the Palau Islands, intrigued by the South Sea art that he had discovered with his friends at the Ethnographical Museum in Dresden. When the war broke out, he was interned and returned to Germany as a coaltrimmer on a steamer from San Francisco over New York to The Netherlands. The portfolio of nine woodcuts, with a woodcut title page and color cover from 1919, contains images that were based on this journey.

The fourth of the Bruke artists, Keckel, is also represented by a typical work of 1916, Bathing Soldiers. Thus, one can study all four of the Early Expressionists and compare their changing styles and approaches.

Hans Thuar, Bonn Bridge and Cathedral, 1921

A woodcut of the Bonn Bridge and Cathedral and two fine paintings of his family represent Has Thuar, the Rhenish Expressionist with whom Pohl studied during her years in Germany. Thuar was a close friend to Macke. Macke is represented in the collection with an early pastel of his wife, a dine pencil drawing, and a watercolor of his preferred theme, young girls or lovers in a garden. Pohl acquired these works directly from the heirs. Macke and Thuar were friend of the Blaue Reiter group, as was Heinrich Campendonk, whose rare painting on glass in the collection merits further study.

Two works by the most important artists of the Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky's color woodcut of Two Riders and Marc’s important color woodcut Tierschicksale (Fate of the Animals) are valuable additions to the collection. The charming and beautiful Rising Sun of 1919 by Klee is undoubtedly a highlight of the collection and a lovely example of the great artist’s poetic view of life. Quite different and yet equally important are the two works by Feininger: a watercolor of a street in the small town of Treptow and a hand-colored etching of Eutin. Feininger had formed with Klee, Kandinsky, and Alexei Jawlensky (of whom a dine charcoal drawing is in the collection) a group called Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), which, in 1924, became a representative name for the four artists whose work Falka Scheyer was to represent here in the United States. (The bulk of her collection and the archives are at the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena.)

One of the true seniors of the Expressionists, Christian Rohlfs, is also represented by a pencil drawing of 1898, a painting of c. 1907, a pastel of 1899, and two color linoleum-print greeting cards of c. 1933. this selection makes it possible to envision the range of the development of tat artist. Of the preceding generation, works by Corith and Slevogt are in the collection, providing examples for comparison. Oskar Kokoschka, the outstanding Austrian artists and one or the few truly independent Expressionists, is represented by two graphics, a pastel and one watercolor. The two lithographs Mrs. Sqoboda listening to Variations on a Bach Fugue (No. 1 and 2) show the wife of the art historian Karl Maria Swoboda, whose house concerts Kokoschka attended and during which he sketched a number of portraits. The pastel from 1913 and the watercolor from 1925 provide valuable examples of the stylistic changes in the works of the artist.

The number of works in this collection that deserve to be singled out is too large to be covered completely in this summary. And yet, the typical and thus valuable watercolor by Emil Nolde, one of the oldest member of the Expressionist founder generation, would require as much emphasis as does the painting by Karl Hofer. A space should be provided for comments on the eight works by March Chagall, ranging in time from c. 1925 to the 1960s. The reader must refer to the complete listings of all works in the back of this catalog.

Because this catalog carefully lists all works and provides all the significant information about works in the Pohl Collection, it is an important contribution to the understanding of this valuable study collection. All of those who want to study art, as well as those who may be able to use the collection for a first introduction to German Expressionism, will be grateful to Dr. Erika Esau for this exhaustive work. The collection and the catalog are introduction to the phenomenon that art is not the precise depiction of something we have already seen or known. All art is, by necessity, distorted in form, as well as in color, in order to transmit to us more than remembrances. Paul Klee said it best: “art Des not repeat the visible, it makes visible.” Every period has its own perceptions, and the fist quarter of our 20^th century provided the basis for our contemporary life and view. The La Vera Pohl Collection at Lawrence University is in this respect an invaluable educational tool.