Exhibitions 1
Erich Wolfsfeld, Lotte Laserstein and Gottfried Meyer: an Exhibition of 20th- century German Naturalism (Agnew's, 5 December-4 January)
The tradition we neglect
Giles Auty
It is three years almost to the day since I introduced the paintings of Lotte Laser- stein, through this column, to a British audience. Then as now I was privileged with a personal preview of the work to be seen, largely because of my known interest in the etchings of Lotte's mentor, Erich Wolfsfeld. The forthcoming exhibition at Agnew's (43 Old Bond Street, W1) brings together three closely linked German artists; Erich Wolfsfeld (1885-1956), Lotte Laserstein (b. 1898) and Gottfried Meyer (b. 1911). Wolfsfeld taught both Laserstein and Meyer during his time as professor of Painting and etching at the Berlin Academy. Laserstein taught the previously untutored Meyer for a year, at Wolfsfeld's instigation, before the younger artist was admitted to the Berlin Academy in 1932. Wolfsfeld was to retain his post at that institution only until 1936 when he was dismissed as part of the anti-Jewish prog- ramme then prevailing. He came to Eng- land three years later and lived here until his death.
Laserstein, who had one Jewish grand- parent, left Germany for Sweden in 1937 for similar reasons and has remained there since. Like Meyer she was a former Meis- terschaler — star pupil — at the Berlin Academy, where she also won the Gold Medal in 1925. She was prodigiously gifted. Yet the quite extraordinary double exhibition of her work in 1987 at Agnew's and the Belgrave Gallery was the first opportunity provided to a British audience to see her paintings. The artist was 90 at the time. The twin shows were admired greatly by both public and critics. In view of this, it is especially regrettable that the work of German realists from the first half of this century has been seen here so seldom. None of the three German artists in the current exhibition was included in the large-scale survey show of 1985 at the Royal Academy, German Art in the 20th Century. Nor did they even merit a men- tion in an index of names which ran to some 450 entries.
Why such omissions occur must seem mysterious to all who remain ignorant of the way most modern art historians and curators think and operate. To put matters at their simplest, the notion prevails in museum circles that the description 'mod- ern' relates to style rather than simply to time. Hence artists such as Wolfsfeld, Laserstein and Meyer, who looked back through their immediate predecessors Leibl and von Menzel to the North Euro- pean traditions of art exemplified by Rem- brandt and Holbein, are not considered stylistically 'modern', although their lives, of course, have been unavoidably of this century. In addition to her acknowledged levels of accomplishment as a painter, Laserstein studied art history and philoso- phy at Berlin University. In short, the three artists in question worked the way they did not from thoughtless habit but intelligent choice. They saw themselves as exponents of the great, unbroken North European tradition of art and thus ironical- ly doomed their careers to neglect from museum personnel empowered by North European states to collect and exhibit the outstanding art of this century.
During the Laserstein exhibition of 1987 opportunities were missed by British and German museums to acquire works of great artistic and art historical importance. And where was our supposedly know- ledgeable feminist art faction which failed to make even a squeak? Her seven- foot painting 'The Roof Garden, Potsdam' and 'Artist and Model in the Studio, Berlin, Wilmersdore are important works by any standard and have gone now to Canadian buyers, the latter to the museum in Montreal. It is an utter tragedy that both have been lost to Europe. The county art gallery at Leicester bought two lesser, but still exceptional works which have attracted great subsequent interest from the visiting public. Sadly, the art we are allowed to see continues to be edited for us by incompetent committees whose com- mitment to a narrow and indefensible interpretation of the meaning of modern art denies our public the true range and richness of art available. Most of the last great works by Laserstein from the Twen- ties and early Thirties are dispersed. The artist is 93 now. I do not consider Wolfsfeld or Meyer such important painters. Never- theless Wolfsfeld remains one of the most accomplished etchers of this century. He lived in England from 1939 to 1956 yet typically the Tate Gallery owns not a single example of his quite exceptional craft; its staff have been too busy seeking out the feeble and transitory.
In 1939 Gottfried Meyer helped Wolfs- feld to leave Germany for England. His own life thereafter was harsh in the ex- treme. In 1944 he was condemned to death by the SS but escaped and survived some- how for weeks in a forest. Most of his early etchings and paintings were destroyed by Lotte Laserstein's 'The Discussion', executed in the artist's studio in Berlin c. 1931. bombing as the war ground to a close. After all of this, Meyer still found the energy and integrity to resist the growing dominance of modernist practice, much of it imported from the victorious USA. He ended his career in Germany in 1977 as professor of painting and drawing at Karls- ruhe Academy, where he upheld tradition- al drawing skills. He is still alive. Wolfsfeld, Laserstein and Meyer are important artists of whom too little is known in Britain. The coming exhibition, though necessarily limited, reflects credit both on its organisers and on the private gallery system in Britain which fulfils yet again the role neglected by our publicly subsidised museum system. If the best of 20th-century realism is still to be excluded from our museums of modern art purely on stylistic grounds then we should belatedly set up a national museum for the kind of 20th-century art which continues rather than rejects the great North European traditions of previous centuries. It would not lack visitors.
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