Kirchner, Lehmbruck, Nolde

The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Expressionism
The term “Expressionism” to identify the new artistic movement in Germany in the early twentieth
century was first used as it is understood today around 1910. After Impressionism, Symbolism, and
Art Nouveau, many young artists—not only in Germany—were searching for a new art in tune with
the times. Seeing themselves above all as opposition to the salon painting of the art academies that
was supported by the state and the grande bourgeoisie, they also turned against the plein air painting
of Impressionism with its focus on surface stimuli. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
a young generation of painters came together whose will to renew sent them searching for new,
modern forms of expression. For all their differences, they had in common an intensification of
expressive content and subjective emotion by means of strong, pure color planes and a spontaneous
painting style, the disintegration of forms, the distortion of perspective, and a turn away from
harmonious balanced composition. Artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff, who had founded the artists’ group Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden in 1905,
were, alongside Franz Marc, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, and Max Pechstein, among its most famous
representatives. Only a few women also managed to find their way into the public perception
during this period. They included Margarete Moll, Gabriele Münter, Renée Sintenis, Milly Steger,
and Marianne von Werefkin. Just a few years after its zenith, not least because of the experience of
the war, the movement was already being superseded by Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Nevertheless,
it would take time before Expressionist art also made it into museum collections. One of
the first was the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, which had opened as a museum in 1909, where
its first director, Fritz Wichert (1878–1951), initially acquired French and German Impressionist
art. Even today, the “French Collection” with Édouard Manet’s The Execution of Emperor Maximilian
(1868–69), is a highlight of the museum, but the Kunsthalle Mannheim is associated above all with
the term “Neue Sachlichkeit,” which was coined for the legendary exhibition of Gustav Friedrich
Hartlaub (1884–1963), the second director of the Kunsthalle, in 1925. The exhibition was subtitled
Deutsche Kunst seit dem Expressionismus (German Art since Expressionism) and showed the new
representational trends of the 1920s. What follows, however, will shed light on just how important
Expressionism also was and is for the institution on Friedrichsplatz. It was supported by a wide
variety of protagonists and their networks and interests, but also by the political conditions. 1
First Purchases and Exhibitions from 1913 Onward
In the field of sculpture, the Kunsthalle Mannheim dedicated itself to Expressionist trends as early
as 1912 and coined the term “Ausdrucksplastik” (expressive sculpture). Ausstellung von Zeichnungen
und Plastiken neuzeitlicher Bildhauer (Exhibition of Drawings and Sculptures of Modern Sculptors)
of 1914, whose catalogue foreword was written by Willy Storck (1889–1927), began with the two
antipodes Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol and presented the latest developments in German
sculpture with works by Karl Albiker and Wilhelm Lehmbruck; Edwin Scharff, Richard Scheibe,
Ernst Barlach and Georg Kolbe; Bernhard Hoetger, and Wilhelm Gerstel. Women artists were also
represented: Grete (Margarete also Marg) Moll, Renée Sintenis, and Milly Steger. From Sintenis,
her portrait of the writer Ernst Toller was acquired later, in 1926, from the Galerie Flechtheim,
while a work by Milly Steger, Frauenbildnis (Portrait of a Woman) of 1920 (cat. 107), entered the
museum in 1973 as a gift from the German-Jewish collector William Landmann, who had emigrated
from Mannheim.
“The
Kunsthalle’s
boldest decision
is its purchase
of a Heckel.”
Theodor Däubler, 1916
12
THE KUNSTHALLE MANNHEIM AND EXPRESSIONISM