20.10.2018 – 6.1.2019
Gallery Crown Prince
The artistic estate of the expressionist painter and graphic artist Paul Kother (* 1878 in Leipzig, † 1963 in Weimar) was presented for the first time in an extensive museum exhibition. In addition to around 100 oil paintings and pastels, these included numerous drawings, watercolours and prints. The Citadel thus presented an artist who regularly exhibited in leading German galleries and art associations between 1910 and 1933. Together with artist friends* and colleagues* such as Otto Mueller, Max Pechstein, Max Beckmann, Maria Slavona and Karl Schmitt-Rottluff, Paul Kother belonged to the avant-garde in Dresden and Berlin until 1933.
Like many other artists of the so-called “lost generation”, however, he was also subject to National Socialist hostility against the avant-garde and was banned from exhibiting. While Kother had participated in World War I as a war painter in Flanders and France, he tried to get himself and his family through the years of World War II with occasional works. Family events and the oppressive situation of the post-war years gradually led him to distance himself from the cultural life of the young GDR and led him to depression and increasing isolation.
The exhibition, for which a comprehensive catalogue will be published, was created in collaboration with the Heylshof Museum in Worms and the Overbeck Museum in Bremen, where it will be shown in 2019 and 2020.
