Bourgeois city life and rural idyll
22.2.2020 – 2.8.2020
Bastion Kronprinz
In a cabinet exhibition, the Zitadelle Spandau shows selected landscape paintings and portraits from the estate of the painter Minna Köhler-Roeber, who was born in Reichenbach in the Vogtland.
Like all women of the time, she was also denied the opportunity to study at a state academy of art until the end of World War I. Instead, she took private painting lessons in Dresden from 1906 under the Latvian-born Johann Walter-Kurau (1869-1932). In addition to Karen Schacht, Ilse Heller-Lazard and Else Lohmann, Hans Zank, Willy Gericke, Florence Henri and others were also trained in painting and drawing by Walter-Kurau. The artist was one of the most important painters of the beginning modern age in Latvia and also maintained a painting school in Berlin from 1917-32. The focus of his work was landscape painting and so most of Johann Walter-Kurau’s students also made a name for themselves as landscape artists.
Characteristic for the estate of the artist Minna Köhler-Roeber, who has only been rediscovered in recent years, are numerous small paintbox formats, i.e. nature studies and elaborated landscapes created plein-air, which are characterized by a sensitive light direction and extensive reduction of the composition to significant painting surfaces. In contrast to these are finely nuanced portraits and interiors, which reveal the influences of the artistic metropolises Paris and Munich. The subdued and finely mixed colouring of Minna Köhler-Roeber’s paintings corresponds to the colour theoretical considerations of Johann Walter-Kurau, who was also scientifically engaged in painting throughout his life.
The exhibition is a cooperation of Zitadelle Spandau with Sabatier Galerie & Kunsthandel, Verden/ Aller.
