Art Of The Day Weekly
#460 - from 16 February 2017 to 22 February 2017
Freundlich, a martyr of the Third Reich
COLOGNE – The artist had not enjoyed a true retrospective in forty years. The Ludwig museum decided to correct that blunder and focuses on the case of Otto Freundlich (1878-1943). Contrary to other persecuted artists, this lover of abstract art, as well as a fervent Communist activist did not survive the Nazi hell. After living for a long time in France, he was deported as a Jew and died in the camp of Majdanek while a great part of his work wasdestroyed. One of his sculptures, a “primitive” head, had actually been used for the cover of the brochure that accompanied in 1938 the exhibition on “degenerate art” and came to be the symbol of the production of these banished artists. This apostle of applied arts used painting and sculpture, as well as stained glass or tapestry to express himself. Aside from the loans from the museum of Pontoise that kept the contents of the artist’s workshop, one of the major pieces of the exhibition is the mosaic of the theatre of Kohln (Naissance de l’homme, 1919), which survived the war by sheer miracle.
• Otto Freundlich, Cosmic Communism at the Ludwig museum, from 18 February to 14 May 2017.