My reflections on art, collectors, marchers and contemporary art auctions
My reflections on art, collectors, marchers and contemporary art auctions
Bridge collection will be auctioned
The outstanding collection of Brücke artists by Hermann Gerlinger from Würzburg is being put up for auction at Ketterer. A loss for research and the museum world
The Brücke collection of the Würzburg entrepreneur Hermann Gerlinger and his wife Hertha has had an outstanding reputation for a long time. There is hardly an exhibition in Germany or abroad for which a loan has not been requested - for decades. "In terms of weight and size, the collection is probably the most important complete representation of the Brücke artists ," wrote the art historian Heinz Spielmann in 2005. And so the 896 works include: paintings, watercolors, drawings, Woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, sculptures, silver jewellery, stone reliefs, woodwork and mosaics as well as posters, painted postcards, catalogs and membership lists designed by the artists. The collection is now to be auctioned over four years from June at the Munich auction house Ketterer
The element of documentary played a special role for Hermann Gerlinger. The collector went far back in his search for traces of creativity. He found Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's "nature studies" in watercolors from the time when he was still going to school, just fifteen years old. From the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner he acquired two sketchbooks, which in the years 1900 and 1901/2 with 23 and 24 sheets respectively contain the earliest evidence of the emerging talent, still captivated by a strict reproduction of what he saw in form and form, paying attention to every detail Colour. And yet there is one sheet that breaks through this narrowness: the 21-year-old drew his father, hatched a lively background and left sections blank. There is more than accommodation here; here new forms and new freedoms are demanded. This also applies to Erich Heckel and his woodcut "Über dem Hügel" from 1903. "Heckel's compositional security in the connection of the different landscape elements is astonishing," explains Hermann Gerlinger. "It is amazing [...] the mastery of this technology, which is new for Heckel."
All in all, Hermann Gerlinger and his wife succeeded in bringing together exemplary pictorial testimonies of the Brücke years between the very beginning and the fading work of Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff around 1970/76. They convey an idea of what started in Dresden in 1906 and became the "program": "Everyone who directly and unadulteratedly reproduces what pushes him to create belongs to us."
The beginning of the collection
The student Hermann Gerlinger made his first acquisition in the 1950s when he discovered Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s woodcut “Melancholie” in a gallery: “A seated woman (knee piece) with her head bowed and melancholic eyes, seen from the front, dominates the composition. African vessels on the table in front of her. In the background a naked female figure, completely cut over by her.” This is how Rosa Schapire this sheet in the 1924 catalog raisonné. For a long time, the future collector, attracted by the work's power, stuttered out his first purchase in installments of 5 Deutschmarks. The entry into what is available today was done.
Portraits of the girl Franzi
Three paintings stand out from the wealth of valuable and valuable works: In the summer of 1910, the Brücke painters Kirchner, Heckel and Pechstein went to the Moritzburg ponds to paint. With them was Lina Franziska Fehrmann, not yet 10 years old, whose liveliness and spontaneity repeatedly inspired the painters. Kirchner captured this fire in the sketchbook. And the painting "The Blue Girl in the Sun" was created. Heinz Spielmann emphasizes the "painterly-coloristic quality. […] Kirchner increases the luminosity through the black of the hair and the sparing use of black contours. The girl's bold blue color makes the warm glowing sunny yellow all the more conscious.”
As early as 1909, Erich Heckel created the enchanting watercolor “Fränzi with blanket”, also at the Moritzburg ponds. One of the highlights of the Gerlinger Collection. In 1910 an interior was created in which Fränzi can be seen together with the boy next door, Hans. Here, a pencil drawing of the same subject, which is also part of the Gerlinger Collection, shows how Heckel worked. That both works found their way into the collection: a stroke of luck; owed to the careful collector's attention and strategy. The painting "Reading" by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff surprises with its cubist, faceted surface design. It comes from his woodcuts and is a stylistic device that articulates the painter's typical "areal force".
Hermann Gerlinger passes his collection on to the next generation. That's a noble gesture. At the same time, regrets remain. The most complete Brücke documentation with its valuable documents will no longer exist. A significant source for art historical research is no longer available. And lending becomes difficult.