Gallery News

2023

2023-11-30

Opening "Joseph Mader. An artist is rediscovered"

November 24, 2023 was a significant day for us in many ways: we opened our first pop-up exhibition and are presenting works by Joseph Mader, who is considered a typical representative of the Forgotten Generation and one of the most recent rediscoveries of classical modernism. In organizing the exhibition, we worked closely with the grandson and director of the Joseph Mader Archive, Maximilian Mader. It was with great pleasure that we welcomed Maximilian Mader and his father Hans Mader, the artist's son, to the vernissage.

With around 40 works, the exhibition provides an overview of Joseph Mader's entire creative period. The artist's impressive and idiosyncratic creative power is already evident in his early paintings from the beginning of the 1930s, which prompted comparisons with the art of Max Beckmann in the press. The reasons for the break in the artist's promising career were explained to visitors by Maximilian Mader. His conversation with literary scholar Paul Werner Wagner was a highlight of the opening. It brought to life an artist who uncompromisingly followed his inner mission and did not shy away from the price of economic hardship. Joseph Mader's straightforward attitude and aversion to propaganda art led to his exclusion from the public art scene during National Socialism. After years of retreat into inner emigration, the painter nevertheless found the strength and creativity to make a new start. In 1946, he was one of the first artists to receive a work permit from the Allies. In the same year, he took part in an exhibition at the Munich Schauspielhaus. Consciously distancing himself from the popular art movements of his time, Joseph Mader remained true to figurative painting throughout his life, expressing his love of creation in a variety of ways using his own formal language.

Maximilian Mader and Hans Mader thanked the salon gallery "Die Möwe" for the first presentation of Joseph Mader's works in Berlin and considered the exhibition to be a significant contribution to the public appreciation of the artist, who has been unjustly largely forgotten.

The exhibition "Joseph Mader. An artist is rediscovered" can be seen until December 2, 2023 in the rooms at Kurfürstendamm 71, 1st floor, in 10709 Berlin.

We are pleased about the coverage:

Click here for the Tagesspiegel article "Back in the saddle".
Click here for the Tagesspiegel's daily tip "Beautiful creation" from November 24, 2023.
Click here for the article "Comeback after 89 years", Süddeutsche Zeitung from November 18/19, 2023.

Impressions of the vernissage "Joseph Mader. An artist is rediscovered"

2023-08-17

Summer salon at the artnow Gallery in cooperation with "Möwe”

There was a good reason why a crowd formed at times on the pavement in front of Gallery artnow: the gallery space could not hold all the visitors at once - so great was the interest in the opening of the Summer Salon on 10 August 2023. The evening's guests also included art lovers from the "Möwe", who had become aware of the Summer Salon through the salon gallery's cooperation with Gallery artnow.

At the beginning of the vernissage, Claudia Wall, owner of the "Möwe", thanked the managing directors Ulrike Riemann and Dr. Felix Brosius for their commitment to dedicate this year's summer exhibition of their gallery to artists of the Forgotten Generation. The subsequent discussion between Dr Brosius and Claudia Wall highlighted the contribution of the Forgotten Generation to the art of Classical Modernism and the significance of this era for today's understanding of art.

Works by representatives of renowned artists' associations such as the Berlin Secession, the November Group or the Hamburg Secession gave visitors a vivid impression of the innovative approaches and diversity of Classical Modernism as they strolled through the exhibition rooms.
In keeping with the theme of the exhibition, music from original shellac records from the 1920s accompanied the vernissage, which, in addition to the encounter with art, also provided an opportunity for good conversation over a glass of wine.

The Summer Salon "Art of Classical Modernism" is on view until 12 September 2023 at Fasanenstraße 42, 10719 Berlin, from Wednesday to Saturday, from 12 to 6 pm each day.

Impressions of the Summer Salon at the artnow Gallery

2023-05-16

Successful participation of the "Möwe" at art KARLSRUHE

At the 20th international art KARLSRUHE we presented successfull new discoveries of classical modernism and post-war modernism from 4 to 7 May. Attracted by the motto of our fair presentation "When KNOWN meets FORGOTTEN", large numbers of art lovers and collectors came to our stand, eager to see noteworthy rediscoveries and interested in revealing connections between almost forgotten artists and their well known contemporaries.

The public therefore paid great attention to the recently rediscovered Munich painter Joseph Mader, to whom the Lehnbachhaus is currently devoting a research project. Mader's paintings and drawings from around 1930 were shown together with prints by his artistic model, the expressionist Max Beckmann. For on the occasion of Mader's first exhibition in Munich in 1932, the press had praised the quality of his paintings and his engagement with Beckmann's art.

Works by three artist friends formed a separate group: the Jewish painter Katja Meirowsky, the sculptor Waldemar Grzimek and the painter Heinz Trökes. These three belonged to the innovative art scene in Berlin after 1945 and also performed in the legendary artist cabaret "Die Badewanne". Last year, we contributed to the rediscovery of Katja Meirowsky, who lived and worked on Ibiza from 1953 to 2002, with a representative exhibition. Her early graphic works and large-format, subliminally luminous paintings captivated the fair visitors just as much as the poetic colour fantasies created in Paris by Heinz Trökes, who is now one of the most important representatives of German post-war modernism. Waldemar Grzimek, one of the great realist sculptors of the 20th century, complemented the pictorial world of his friends, which oscillates between representationalism and abstraction, with his virtuoso bronze "Schwebende" (Floating) from 1966, which gives expression to the beauty, liveliness and radiance of the human body.

The colour explosions of Gerhart Hein, who owed his artistic career to the former Brücke member Otto Mueller, occupied a special place in the presentation. Hein dissolved figuration in his paintings in the mid-1950s. In the years that followed, he created abstract structures that fascinated viewers with their almost magical colour intensity.

The One Artist Show at our stand [in cooperation with the WOLFRAM BECK Foundation] was dedicated to the Berlin sculptor Wolfram Beck. Aesthetic rigour and precision craftsmanship, coupled with a high sensitivity for the treatment of the respective material, such as wood, steel, bronze, acrylic and stone, characterise his multifaceted oeuvre, which includes sculptures, assemblages, drawings and paintings.

Impressions of our exhibition stand at the art KARLSRUHE