East Finchley Open Artists April newsletter

A self isolating story for our times

MIKE COLES writes:-

Felix Nussbaum (1904 – 1944) was a German painter. He was Jewish. He is not well known but he could have been forgotten for ever.

A rather trite piece of trivia –
Economist P H Frances of the Erasmus University School of Economics in the Netherlands reports that painters create their most masterful works (at least as determined by the marketplace) “at the 0.618 fraction of their lives. On average, painters produced their most highly valued work when they were 41.92 years old; they had lived just under 62 percent of their total lives”. Specifically, “the average fraction (of their life) is 0.6198,” he writes, calling that “quite striking”. That’s because the famous Golden Ratio - familiar to artists, mathematicians, and architects is approximately 0.618.

Felix Nussbaum died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz aged 39

Of course, many artists die before they reach their potential and we will never know what Nussbaum might have achieved, but many of the greatest artists produced great work well into old age. Picasso died at 91, Michelangelo at 89, Degas 83, Matisse 85 – Titian, Renoir Munch, there are plenty.

But who was Felix Nussbaum?

He was born in Osnabruck in Northern Germany in 1904. He came from a middle-class Jewish-German family. His father, who considered himself a proud German, painted as a hobby and supported his sons plans to become an artist.
Nussbaum left Osnabruck in 1922 at the age of 18 to study art in Hamburg. He returned to visit his parents, but he never again lived there. In 1925 he moved to Berlin and continued to study while setting up a studio and sharing an apartment with his girlfriend, an artist from Poland named Felka Platek.
He was prolific, his figurative paintings evocative of van Gogh and his landscapes influenced by de Chirico and Otto Dix, but he sold little. Indeed, his main client and fan was his father, a well-off iron merchant who donated several of his works to friends in Osnabruck.

Belgian author and journalist Mark Schaevers has written a book about Nussbaum. “He was recognized as prominent painter already in the early 30-ies,” Mark explains. “Even the New York Times mentioned his great breakthrough painting ‘Der Tolle Platz’ in 1931.

In 1932, with the Nazi’s in power, his studio in Berlin was burnt down and 150 works were lost.
He left Berlin and eventually settled in Brussels

“When growing up as an artist Felix abandoned the Jewish religion, but during his exile years he always felt solidarity with his fellow-Jews. He couldn’t escape his Jewish identity. From being an apolitical painter, he became a resistance painter.” Mark quotes the famous Jewish-Italian author Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, and wrote: “Now I’m really a Jew. They sew the star of David on me, and not only on my coat.” With the world he saw falling apart, Nussbaum said that “I had left the world of innocence behind me. I did large compositions, works which mocked, accused and provoked.”

When the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940 he was arrested by the gestapo and held at the Saint-Cyprien detention camp in France, but managed to escape a few months later whilst being transported to Germany. He somehow made his way back to Brussels where he re-joined Felka.

Nussbaum and his wife went into hiding, first in an attic and then in a basement. Remarkably, he continued painting despite the dangers and hardships and it’s the work he did during this period that has earned him a place as one of the few artistic witnesses of Jewish persecution. The years that followed became increasingly difficult. In the spring of 1942, Nussbaum hid his paintings with two acquaintances, including a Belgian dentist whose name is remembered only as Dr. Grosfils.

The painting which brought Nussbaum most notice is “Self-portrait with a Jewish ID-card”. The picture of the painting has become an iconic symbol of the times.
“There Nussbaum stands, cornered against a wall and with dark clouds above, with a hat on his head and the yellow Star of David on his coat, looking straight into the eyes of the viewer. In his hand Nussbaum holds an ID-card stamped with “Juif-Jood”. Despite the desperate situation, there is room for a kind of humour since the picture on the card shows Nussbaum with the same hat,” Mark Schaevers says. “This isn’t only a picture of a persecuted Jew. It also expresses resistance against the persecution. Nussbaum probably never wore the Star of David. He wanted to live and paint to the inevitable end.”

His 1940 'Self Portrait in the Camp', is particularly haunting. Nussbaum stares out at us almost urging us to deny the scene unfolding in the background. His expression is not asking for our help, but seems accusing: why are we allowing this to happen?

During this dangerous time in hiding, painting became an outlet and an act of resistance for him with the creation of over 450 works. But on June 20, 1944 he was denounced by a neighbour and arrested, with his wife, by the Germans. They were deported to Auschwitz, where Nussbaum was exterminated with most of his family (‘routine industrialised murder’ seems inadequate, and doesn’t seem to embody the enthusiasm of the Nazi’s)

While Nussbaum was identified with a number of artistic movements it seems that he was best known as one of the main representatives of New Objectivity.
(The New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism. Merciless naturalistic depictions, sometimes reminiscent of the meticulous processes of the Old Masters, frequently portrayed Weimar society in a caustically satirical manner powerfully illustrated a narrative of hopeless flight and the life of Jewish refugees) MoMA

“Death Triumphant”, dated 18 April 1944 was painted shortly before his death. The crumpled music score in the left corner of this powerful painting, which shows Death’s triumph over Western civilisation, has the first bars of “The Lambeth Walk”, a popular song from an English musical in 1937 – particularly identified with Jewishness
.
So as the war came to its grisly end that was the last we heard of Felix Nussbaum - his early paintings burned, his later paintings hidden and lost – the world moved on and he was just a footnote in art history.

UNTIL

Gustel Moses-Nussbaum knew that her cousin, Felix Nussbaum, had been a painter. She knew he was aware of the inevitable death that faced all Jews in the hands of Nazi Germany and that Nussbaum took precautions to preserve and hide his paintings. She also knew that, along with his parents and most of her family, he had died at Auschwitz. But it was only in 1960 that she learned that many of his paintings were stored in a Brussels basement. Nussbaum had once said: ''If I perish, do not let my paintings die -show them to the people.''

Mrs. Moses-Nussbaum felt duty-bound to make this happen. In what she called her life's work, she set about rescuing Felix’s paintings. She heard that Dr. Grosfils had a collection of her cousin's work. Because the Belgian dentist refused to hand them over, demanding proof that she was a legitimate heir, it was nine years before a Belgian court ruled in her favour. The 177 paintings they recovered were in dismal condition, damaged by dirt and moisture and in some cases ripped. She attracted the interest and co-operation of the Osnabruck Museum of Cultural History and they bought the collection and restored them. They then commissioned New York architect Daniel Libeskind to build a gallery to house the collection. This was opened in 1998. (Libeskind’s Polish parents had been Holocaust survivors).

In 1983, when the house at Rue Archimède in Brussels, where Nussbaum hid during the war, was demolished, some twenty photographs of his paintings were found, which Felix had hidden in the attic where they were hiding.
In 2011 an exhibition of his paintings took place in Paris with loans from the museum in Osnabrück. Moves are afoot to arrange a new exhibition in Brussels, the city where Nussbaum lived and created so much of his impressive work.

Details of the Osnabruck Museum are here: - https://www.museumsquartier-osnabrueck.de/

WELCOME TO THE EAST FINCHLEY OPEN ARTISTS APRIL NEWSLETTER

THIS MONTH - Coronavirus - Felix Nussbaum - Meet the Artist - Cinema Slides -
Virtual Galleries - The Biggest Art Theft - and more

If you are viewing on gmail remember to click 'display images' and 'view entire message'
when you reach the bottom.

WELCOME TO THE EAST FINCHLEY OPEN ARTISTS APRIL NEWSLETTER

THIS MONTH - Coronavirus - Felix Nussbaum - Meet the Artist - Cinema Slides - Virtual Galleries - The Biggest Art Theft - and more If you are viewing on gmail remember to click 'display images' and 'view entire message' when you reach the bottom.

THIS MONTH - Coronavirus - Felix Nussbaum - Meet the Artist - Cinema Slides -
Virtual Galleries - The Biggest Art Theft - and more

If you are viewing on gmail remember to click 'display images' and 'view entire message'
when you reach the bottom.