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| Galerie Flechtheim | |
|---|---|
| Name | Galerie Flechtheim |
| Established | 1913 |
| Founder | Alfred Flechtheim |
| Dissolved | 1933 (Berlin gallery), reestablished later |
| Location | Düsseldorf, Berlin, New York, Amsterdam |
| Type | Commercial art gallery |
Galerie Flechtheim was a pioneering commercial art gallery founded by Alfred Flechtheim that became central to the promotion of modernist painting and sculpture across Europe and the United States. The gallery is noted for introducing Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Neue Sachlichkeit to collectors and museums, building relationships with artists, dealers, critics, and institutions. Its activities intersected with major cultural figures, exhibitions, museums, and political events of the early to mid-20th century.
Alfred Flechtheim established a network linking artists, collectors, curators, and institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Guggenheim Museum, Neue Galerie, and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, while corresponding with figures like Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Georges Braque. The gallery operated amid movements represented by Der Blaue Reiter, Les XX, Die Brücke, De Stijl, and Salon des Indépendants, and participated in exhibitions alongside organizers such as Herwarth Walden, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Peggy Guggenheim, and Will Grohmann. Political events including the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazi Party, the Reichstag fire, and World War II affected its operations, dispersal of collections, and later restitution claims involving institutions like the Bundesrepublik Deutschland and international courts.
From its founding in 1913, Flechtheim promoted artists associated with French Impressionism, Russian Constructivism, Italian Futurism, and German Expressionism, representing names such as Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Amedeo Modigliani, and Giorgio de Chirico. The gallery organized exhibitions with avant-garde figures including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Dufy, Henri Rousseau, and Georges Rouault, and coordinated sales with dealers like Paul Cassirer, Bernheim-Jeune, Sonderbund, and S. I. Newhouse. Critical reception involved journalists and critics such as Alfred Kerr, Ludwig Justi, Walter Benjamin, and Clemens Weiler, and the gallery supplied works to institutions like the Städel Museum, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum Ludwig, and Tate Modern.
After 1933, Flechtheim's assets and gallery spaces were targeted during Nazi Germany's purge of so-called "degenerate art", forcing him into exile where he engaged with art markets in cities including Paris, Amsterdam, London, and New York City. In exile he interacted with émigré networks including Ernst Toller, Bertolt Brecht, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, and institutions such as the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, British Museum, Musée du Jeu de Paume, and Carnegie Institute. Auctions, forced sales, and transfers involved auction houses like Sotheby's, Christie's, and dealers such as Curt Valentin and Heinemann, while restitution concerns later engaged tribunals, archives, and provenance researchers at institutions like the German Lost Art Foundation, Central Collecting Point, and Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets.
Following World War II, attempts to reestablish activities connected Flechtheim to postwar cultural reconstruction initiatives involving the Allied Control Council, Marshall Plan, Kommission zur Untersuchung von NS-Raubgut, and curators such as Gebrauchsanweisung, Harald Szeemann, and Klaus Honnef. The gallery’s legacy influenced galleries and museums including the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Centre Pompidou, and Israel Museum, and shaped markets mediated by auction houses Van Ham, Dorotheum, and private collectors like Paul Getty and Samuel Kress.
Flechtheim represented, exhibited, or handled works by a wide spectrum of artists: Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Kandinsky, Klee, Chagall, Magritte, Dalí, Miró, Léger, Mondrian, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Oskar Kokoschka, Theo van Doesburg, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Raoul Dufy, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio de Chirico, Naum Gabo, Alexander Archipenko, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Paul Klee, George Braque, Fernand Léger, Yves Tanguy, André Masson, Kurt Schwitters, Hans Arp, Aristide Maillol, Gino Severini, and Umberto Boccioni.
Galleries and exhibition spaces connected to Flechtheim included premises in Düsseldorf, Berlin, New York City, and Amsterdam, with architectural contexts overlapping with buildings designed by architects and firms such as Peter Behrens, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut, and Hermann Muthesius. Exhibition fittings, catalogues, and display design referenced practices used at Sonderbund, Haus am Waldsee, Kunstverein Hamburg, Galerie Van Diemen, Galerie Paul Cassirer, and international fairs like the Venice Biennale, documenta, and Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.
The gallery’s impact extends through provenance research, restitution debates, and scholarship involving historians and curators such as Hannah Arendt, Siegfried Giedion, Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., Ernst Gombrich, Richard Dorment, Peter Selz, and institutions conducting catalog raisonnés and exhibitions at Neue Nationalgalerie, Alte Nationalgalerie, Kimbell Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery, British Council, and Smithsonian Institution. Its promotion of modernism influenced later dealers and collectors like Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paul Rosenberg, Emile Seligman, Samuel Courtauld, Isamu Noguchi, and led to scholarly reassessments in journals and conferences at Getty Research Institute, Max Planck Institute for Art History, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Courtauld Institute of Art, and restitution forums including the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.
Category:Art galleries in Germany