Rare and mysterious 1939 exhibition catalogue. 

Its finding in the 1970’s ultimately lead to this special collection, exhibition and website.  

In the early 1970’s, when I was a student roaming the antiquarian books shops and flea markets in the city on Saturdays, an old German exhibition catalogue was found. After it was purchased it became part of my expanding library and lived its life forgotten on a shelf. It was not until the late 1990’s rearranging overflowing book cases, it came to light for the second time, it was catalogued and stored again.  

And then, entered in the digital age and trying to find out what it actually was about, Googling on a rainy day, this remarkable history unfolds. 

Das Haus der Frau 1914-1939: 

Leipzig BUGRA: “ein Wiederbesuchen”

Berlin  juli - oktober 1939

The booklet, besides containing details concerning the organising committee, it sponsors, address lists, opening hours, exhibition lenders etc… , alphabetically sums up the works of the represented women artists, the lay out and arrangements of the works in the different rooms of the exhibition building. In adjacent rooms selected works by important male colleagues (and teachers) and collections of works by sister artists in surrounding countries (Netherlands and Scandinavia) were to be displayed.   

After a year of preparations, the exhibition was cancelled by the Nazi regime: many of the Jewish represented artists had fled Nazi Germany, had gone underground or “disappeared”.  Several of the other artists withdrew their contributions to openly show their solidarity. 

Later “officials” (in brown shirts) removed and destroyed all proof of the exhibition’s existence: advertising print work, posters, invitations, newspaper announcements, catalogues  etc.. 

Not long after most of the surviving Jewish artist were captured, deported and murdered in the years to follow. On September 1. 1939 Germany invaded Poland.    

  

Together with a copy of the actual 1914 Leipzig exhibitions in “Das Haus der Frau” these two documents cover the Golden age of Modern German printmaking (without the aid of an etching press) by German women artists. They proved all to be born between 1850-1900. 

In the years that followed collecting colour woodblock prints (“Farbholzschnitte”) was mainly focussed on works created by the artists represented in those two catalogues. 

This website is an attempt to recreate, with my personal collection, the actual 1939 exhibition. Many of the works were found, some of them extremely rare, as “only known copy to exist”.  Because of the immense destructions of Germany’s cities by allied bombing in the aftermath of WW-II some prints mentioned were, to this day, ”never seen again”. 

The Corona pandemic and complete lack of any interest by the Museum and Art world blocked the initiatives of these works to be displayed in an actual exhibition. It resulted in a digital display (this website, constantly under construction). In 2024 a private home gallery (Musée Privé) was realised also because “the official Museum and Art World” and with them the associated art historians not yet have realised (or are ignorant of) the importance, quality and scale of creative activity by women artists in the first decades of the XX. century. 

An illustrated exhibition book is not foreseen but the exhibition and collection administration is available as a 650 page newly composed Artist Lexicon with hundreds of new short biographies covering all the represented artists involved in Modern Printmaking and many, many more …. A Who-is-Who in artistic Imperial and Weimar Germany. The result of 20 years of private research. 

A digital version (PDF) is also available on request.