Images(2)

The Clown

Object number2008.1.15

Artist Gert Heinrich Wollheim (German, 1894 - 1974)

Date1936

MediumOil on wood

Credit LineGift of Estate of Sibyl Barsky Grucci

DescriptionOil painting on rectangular wood plank. Image of a male with opened mouth and hands linked together. He is wearing a shirt and small top hat. Left background there is a tent with flag and people walking around. Right background there are green trees.Dimensions17 x 19.125 in. (43.2 x 48.6 cm)
SignedBottom right corner: "Wollheim 36".
MarksPaper label on back: "CARNEGIE IN... / PITTSBURGH P... / "The Clown" / by / GERT WOLLHEIM / List C-No. 29 / For Dr. Kurniker".
Historical NotesThis painting by Gert Heinrich Wollheim Wollheim was displayed at the Carnegie International. Gert Heinrich Wollheim was born in Dresden-Loschwitz and studied at the College of Fine Arts in Weimar from 1911 to 1913. During World War I, he fought on the eastern and western fronts and was wounded in the stomach, an experience which became crucial for his later artwork. In 1919 he left Berlin for Düsseldorf, where he created many of his woodcuts, etchings, and paintings to express his terrible experiences of war. At the end of 1919 Wollheim went to Düsseldorf and became a founding member of the "Young Rhineland" group, which also included Max Ernst, Otto Dix, and Ulrich Leman. In 1925 he moved to Berlin, and his work, which always emphasized the theatrical and the grotesque, began a new phase of coolly objective representation. Immediately after Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, his works were declared degenerate art and many were destroyed. In 1938 the Nazis showed three works by Wollheim in their exhibition "Degenerate Art" in Munich as examples of accomplished madness. While in Paris, Wollheim became active in the Resistance. From Paris he fled to Saarbrücken and later to Switzerland. In 1939 he was arrested and held in labor camps (Vierzon, Ruchard, Gars, and Septfonds) until his escape in 1942, after which he hid in the Pyrénées. After the war ended he returned to France, and in 1947 moved to New York and became an American citizen. Wollheim died in New York in 1974. His art was popular in Pittsburgh and was regularly on display at the Carnegie Internationals. Part of a collection from the estate of Jewish artist Sibyl Barsky Grucci.

Previous owner Sibyl Barsky Grucci (born 1905)

Related institution Carnegie Institute

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