Fritz Winter
Paths to documenta (1949-1955)
An exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of documenta and the 120th birthday of Fritz Winter
With the exhibition "Fritz Winter. Paths to documenta (1949-1955)", the Galerie Henze & Ketterer focuses on one of the most influential artistic personalities of German post-war modernism. To mark the 70th anniversary of the first documenta in 1955, the show, curated by Patrick Urwyler, takes a concentrated look at the decisive years that placed Fritz Winter (1905-1976) at the forefront of contemporary art.
In 1955, his painting "Composition before Blue and Yellow" was the central work in the painting hall of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel - a symbol of the new self-confidence of German post-war abstraction. Presented directly opposite Picasso's "Girl in Front of a Mirror", Winter's large-format work became a symbol of West German painting's successful connection to international art developments.
Two key pioneers of Fritz Winter's success were the poet, intellectual and life partner Dr. Margarete Schreiber-Rüffer (1890-1958) and the Bernese gallery owner Hedwig Marbach. Their work in the years after the war deserves special attention - not least because it has a direct impact on today's exhibition. But more on this later.
Three early works shown at the beginning of the exhibition point the way forward for Winter's artistic path. They represent the phase before the Second World War and are crucial for understanding his works of the 1950s. Looking back, Ingeborg Henze-Ketterer and Wolfgang Henze state: "In a painting from the 1950s, the signs, forms and colors of the early years around 1930 are just as present as those of later years can already be guessed at".
Header: Exhibition views of the large painting hall Museum Fridericianum, documenta I. (1955)
© documenta archiv / Photo: Günther Becker

Fritz Winter
Composition in front of blue and yellow
1955
Installation view of the exhibition: Fritz Winter. Documenta artists of the first hour, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Neue Galerie, 20.10.2023 to 28.1.2024.
Virtual reconstruction of room 27
of documenta I. 1955
Winter's painting "Composition in front of Blue and Yellow" was the central work in the painting room of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel in 1955. Presented directly opposite Picasso's "Girl in Front of a Mirror", Winter's large-format work became a symbol of the successful integration of West German painting into the international development of art.
Source: Hessen Kassel Heritage
1927-1930
- At the Bauhaus with Paul Klee
The exhibition opens with the painting "Untitled" from 1930 - a work that refers directly to Winter's artistic beginnings in terms of time, form and content. His training at the Bauhaus in Dessau (1927-1930) was particularly formative for him, especially the free painting classes with Paul Klee. In Klee, who paid great attention to him, Winter found his "master .
Alongside Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer were also important influences, but it was above all Klee who gave him key impulses - including the idea of genesis: the process of creating a work is of fundamental importance to Winter.
"The act of painting is not understood as a means of visualizing certain ideas, but is the painting itself in its execution. The painting is the static result of painting [...]." Natural growth was the model for artistic creation: an artist should not work according to nature, but like nature.
Nature forms the basis for Winter's abstract work. This approach is also reflected in Kandinsky's conviction that it is not about depicting external phenomena, but about representing inner forces. Movement, energy and rhythm are expressed through abstract means such as line, point, surface and color. An additional expressive moment came into Winter's work through Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - an artist whom Winter visited several times during and after his Bauhaus period in Switzerland.

Fritz Winter
Untitled
1930
Oil on satin-finished card
50 x 65 cm
1930-1949
- Painting ban, internal emigration and war
The exhibition continues Winter's journey with the painting "K III 100" from 1939. The thirties were behind him, with a dynamic development of his own abstract formal language and a budding career. However, the National Socialists' seizure of power and his retreat to the Ammersee put the brakes on this development. In 1937, Winter was defamed as a "degenerate artist" and banned from painting. The final turning point came in 1939 when he was called up for military service.
The work "K III 100" already heralds the series of small-format sheets created in 1944 during a furlough: "Triebkräfte der Erde" (Driving Forces of the Earth) - a group of around 50 drawings that are now considered key works of German post-war abstraction. The artist's inner strength remained unbroken despite the war. This phase is often described as Winter's "inner emigration" - a retreat into a spiritual confrontation with nature and creation:
Nothing can shake you more deeply than when you encounter a blossom, a leaf, so completely without possessions, so completely without being a civilian human being, and the greatness of creation is bestowed upon you. [...] The fact that the war gives me this opportunity makes me endure it.
Quote from a letter by Fritz Winter (no year), in: Schreiber-Rüffer, Margarete, "Über Fritz Winter", in: Die schöpferischen Kräfte der abstrakten Malerei, Ein Zyklus, ed. by Ottomar Domnick, Bergen: Müller & Kiepenheur, 1947,pp.30-40.

Fritz Winter
K III 101
1939
Oil on canvas
90 x 70 cm

Fritz Winter
Im Unendlichen
1949
Oil on laid paper, mounted on card
50 x 70 cm
Dr. Margarete Schreiber-Rüffer
- the basis for Winter's career
After 1949, it was Dr. Margarete Schreiber-Rüffer in particular who played a key role in ensuring that Winter's work was not forgotten during his absence - on the contrary: she promoted his fame at home and abroad. During the war and in the years that followed, she organized exhibitions in Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Hanover, Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Paris and Switzerland. She cultivated contacts with art historians, gallery owners and collectors - including Ottomar Domnick, an important promoter of abstract art in Germany.
Schreiber-Rüffer published the groundbreaking essay "Über Fritz Winter" in the book "Die schöpferischen Kräfte in der abstrakten Malerei" in 1947 - a work which, together with the accompanying exhibition of abstract artists (including Winter), contributed significantly to the establishment of abstraction in Germany. Her commitment was the basis for Winter's later career. From 1952, she traded as Schreiber-Winter and remained a clever and indispensable manager of Winter's artistic work until her death in 1958.
After 1949, Fritz Winter's career took off rapidly: In the same year, he co-founded the artist group Zen 49, and in 1950 he was awarded 2nd prize at the 25th Venice Biennale. This was followed by awards from the cities of Stuttgart and Darmstadt and from the Deutscher Künstlerbund in Berlin. In 1955 he was appointed to the Staatliche Werkakademie in Kassel.


Photo with Maria Marc, Margarete Schreiber-Rüffer and Fritz Winter in front of the house in Diessen around 1952.
"Die Schöpferischen Kräfte in der abstrakten Malerei" is an important publication (and exhibition cycle) on abstract painting in Germany. It was published while Fritz Winter was still a prisoner of war in Russia. The essay "About Fritz Winter" by Margarete Schreiber-Rüffer paved the way for Winter to continue his career seamlessly after the war.
Hedwig Marbach
- Winters Bern gallery owner
The art market also responded to Winter's growing success - particularly through the Marbach Gallery in Bern. The Bernese gallery owner Hedwig Marbach remembers 1968:
"I saw the first originals at the Venice Biennale in 1950 [...] there were two paintings there [...] they spoke of a mature personality, a gifted artist who had gone through a good school. I made the decision to get to know this artist, perhaps to hire him for my gallery"
On her first visit to Winter's studio in Dießen am Ammersee, she met Margarete Schreiber-Rüffer, who showed her a selection of newly created works - three of which she purchased immediately. Shortly afterwards, Marbach signed a contract with Winter and secured a right of first refusal: "For five years, I made the trip to the Ammersee every month to make my choice from the newly created works". The result was not only a close collaboration, but also the largest and probably most exclusive collection of Fritz Winter's works at the time, which is part of the provenance of key works in our current exhibition.


Photo of Fritz Winter in conversation with his gallery owner Hedwig Marbach in front of the artist's house in Diessen, fall 1955
The Marbach catalogs brought together the works that Hedwig Marbach acquired as Fritz Winter's gallery owner in the years 1950-1955, thus creating the largest collection of Fritz Winter's works at the time. Galerie Marbach was represented in Bern and Paris and became an important player in Fritz Winter's career after the Second World War.

Fritz Winter
Plant Ornamental
1953
Oil on canvas
50.5 x 73 cm
1954/1955
- "Alla Prima" for documenta I.
At the heart of the exhibition are twelve paintings from 1954/1955, all measuring 75 x 100 cm and all from Marbach's collection. The art historian Karlheinz Gabler assigns them to the work phase of the "notation paintings" - paintings that seem like notes turned into images. The term "notation" refers to the recording of fleeting processes such as music, movement or language - a fitting comparison in view of Winter's creative process.
The group of works is complemented by colored and black-and-white chalk and charcoal drawings, which can be read as studies or preliminary stages of these notations. They provide an insight into the artist's formal repertoire and reveal the diversity of his abstract language.

Fritz Winter
In front of gray and yellow
1955
Oil on paper on canvas
75 x 100 cm
What all the works on display have in common is a consistent reduction to the simplest formal elements. They were created "alla prima", i.e. without subsequent corrections, in free handwriting. They reveal not only Winter's inexhaustible imagination, but also a psychographic quality - as if half a decade's worth of experience is reflected in concentrated form and reduced to a common denominator.
A monumental expression of this "great denominator" reached its temporary climax in the work "Composition in front of blue and yellow". Presented as a mural, it served documenta initiator Arnold Bode as a highly symbolic backdrop for the ceremonial opening of documenta I on July 15, 1955 - a powerful setting for Werner Haftmann's programmatic exclamation:
"Art of the 20th century!"

Fritz Winter around 1949
Photo: Fritz Winter Foundation Ahlen
Exhibition catalog for the exhibition
Online for download