Precarious Arcadia I.

When in February 1935 a few faithful people in Berlin buried Max Liebermann, who had shaped an age of German art, without ceremony and unnoticed by the public, more was laid to rest than a great painter. This was also the feeling of Hans Purrmann, then fifty-five years old, who was present. He had striven to the very end for an appropriate burial by the Prussian Academy of Arts. The art world had already closed itself off to him, too, through the dissolution of the Berlin Secession, through the hanging of his paintings in exhibitions and museums, through the closing of the galleries of modern art. On July 23 of the same year, Purrmann wrote to a friend: "I have been given the post of administrator at the Villa Romana in Florence.... There is not much to the post, only a free apartment (furnished), four rooms and a studio, no salary, but the possibility of transferring German money. I accepted for two years and I have to start in October. With that I get out of Berlin and the fruitless quarrel." Beginning of a typical unspectacular and pragmatic retreat of a painter from Germany to Italy, which he already knew well, but also the beginning of a long series of paintings and watercolors, in which the landscape of Tuscany and the urban landscape of Florence received an unusual homage.

In contrast, Eduard Bargheer's retreat from Hamburg to Ischia and Florence took place in transitions. There were many signs of warning for him: dissolution of the Hamburg Secession, closure of exhibitions in which he was involved, but also nuances such as the instruction of his sailing club to change the name of his boat "Hans Castorp" inspired by Thomas Mann, which he acknowledged with resignation, finally the emigration - if not flight - of his mostly Jewish Hamburg collectors and patrons. Despite these clear signs and although Bargheer was by no means politically approved, he still acquired a house in Blankenese in 1935. He returned to Hamburg again and again and even exhibited at the Commeter Gallery there in 1940, but at the same time he built up a new existence in Italy and was even able to exhibit in Florence. It began an artistic hymn and analysis of the Italian landscape, especially the island of Ischia, which reached its peak, since Bargheer remained in Italy after the war, in the fifties and sixties.

The German art of the Modern art developed from 1933 exclusively abroad apart from islands of small free spaces and from isolated hidden studios at home. A not inconsiderable and not insignificant part of this art activity abroad took place in Italy, while in the once most progressive and effective art business in the world, in the museums and art associations of Germany, the Nazi kitsch established itself. In Italy, a situation presented itself for the artists that represented both "inner emigration" and exile of changing and different mix. "Inner emigration" insofar as some of them were quite able to return to Germany. The freedom that remained there even allowed them to sell their works in order to be able to live off them in Italy. Exile insofar as they were deprived of their cultural roots and the relationship to Germany could well become life-threatening. A hermaphroditic situation and a tightrope walk, which requires sensitivity for intermediate tones from those affected, but also from today's viewers.

In addition to the centuries-old longing for Italy, some very real experiences also spoke in favor of this country, where art is highly valued by all classes of the population: in 1932, Max Peiffer Watenphul wrote from Porto Salvo near Gaeta that he and Karl Rössing were "the only foreigners there. The kings of the place.", and as late as December 1943, after the occupation by the Germans and shortly before his deportation to Auschwitz, where he perished, Rudolf Levy reported to his friend, the writer Herbert Schlüter, from Florence: "I still sell my paintings quite well...". Emigrants, but also numerous Italian collectors bought works from the German artists in Italy for their collections. In the small gallery "Il Ponte" at the Lungarno Guicciardini in Florence they could even exhibit.

Eduard Bargheer experienced the miracle of the South in October 1935 on the island of Ischia, which he described on October 20: "Every morning when I open the shutters and look at Sant'Angelo, the same joyful shock passes through me again, that everything really exists, that I am not dreaming the place." And on October 23: "Tomorrow I'll be here 10 days, and I have the feeling that they will become important for the rest of my life." After his beginnings in the Nordic Expressionism of the Hamburg Secession of the 1920s, his art has revolved since the 1940s around the central themes of "City" (Forio d'Ischia) at various times of the year and day, the "Procession" that often takes place there, the "Epomeo", the mountains above it, the "Volcanic Landscape with Cap" further south as well as the "Gorge" there and the vegetation there seen from close up in "Agave" or "Opuntie". In these themes, he was able to fully penetrate from 1947 from the outer appearance to the inner structure of this island and created a hymn to the southern cultural and natural landscape and its light, as our exhibition shows many times.

Max Peiffer Watenphul left his mark on the Ruhr region, the Bauhaus in Weimar, and the Folkwang School in Essen during the 1920s. After what seemed like almost naive, yet soon magical beginnings in landscape, cityscape, still life, and portraiture, work to the south became a defining influence on his work —for example, to Mexico in 1924, but also to Salzburg, Dubrovnik, and Sanary-sur-Mer, and time and again to Italy. Here, in the landscapes of Ischia and Cefalù from 1937 and the still lifes from the same period, the intense conflict between brightness, light, and openness on the one hand, and darkness, dullness, and closedness on the other, finally resolved itself in favor of southern light and southern cheerfulness. The paintings of his Italian friend and fellow artist Filippo De Pisis likely affirmed Peiffer Watenphul on his path toward a lighter, airier style of painting characterized by vigorous brushstrokes, but also by leaving unprimed areas of the canvas exposed or scraping away the paint. Like Purrmann for Tuscany and Bargheer for Ischia, he captured the image of the hot southern Italian landscape and its magnificent floral splendor. He had the misfortune of having to return to Germany in 1941, where he was unable to paint, but the good fortune of being able to devote himself once again entirely to the southern light of Italy beginning in 1946.

Hans Purrmann was likely the best-known and most successful of the painters who retreated to Italy after 1933. Favorable circumstances afforded him relatively free and steady opportunities to work in his country of refuge, namely as director of the Villa Romana, although his situation remained precarious, as his fundamentally opposed stance toward National Socialism was well known. In addition to a few nudes, a series of portraits, and still lifes, he never tired of depicting the Tuscan landscape, primarily in the immediate vicinity of the villa, from which he was reluctant to stray. Thus, he painted the view from the villa, the villa itself, the garden, and the fountain—which we are able to showcase in our exhibition as a central painting from his Florentine years. The result is a memorable depiction of the form, color, and light of the Tuscan landscape and its vegetation—especially the cypress trees—which, for those familiar with it, seems to superimpose itself like a film over reality: through Purrmann’s eyes, one searches for the dome of Florence Cathedral above the tops of the cypress trees against the backdrop of the Apennine Mountains. A student of Matisse and an admirer of French painting, he had applied his paint with ever-greater lightness in the 1920s on the sun-drenched shores of Sanary-sur-Mer and in Langenargen on Lake Constance. In doing so, he broke away from his models and found his own style. Tuscany gave his pictorial form and color new shape and substance, work his work full work .

Dr. Wolfgang Henze