Alma Del Banco

Alma Aline Henriette del Banco (1862-1943) was a German modernist painter of Jewish ancestry.

Life and work

She came from an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, Eduard Moses del Banco (1810–1881), ran a business selling tobacco products, pig bristles, horse hair and bed feathers. Her mother, Therese Vallentin (1824–1884), was from Sweden.Biography of Del Banco
by Friederike Weimar @ Stolpersteine Hamburg At the age of thirty, after practicing various handicrafts, she turned to painting. From 1895 to 1905, she studied at a private women's art school operated by Valeska Röver. Her instructors there included and Arthur Illies.

At the beginning of World War I, she moved to Paris, where she studied with André Lhote and Fernand Léger. There, she was exposed to Cubism and Expressionism. She returned to Hamburg after the war and became a freelance artist. From 1919, she lived with her half-brother, Siegmund (1856-1938), who was also unmarried. Later that year, she became one of the founding members of the "". The following year, she joined the Deutscher Künstlerbund. During the 1920s, she made numerous painting trips to Italy and the Balkans, accompanied by her fellow artist, .

Going into the 1930s, her style was more detailed, and she had become a sought-after portrait painter. Unfortunately, she soon began to feel the effects of Germany's increasing Anti-Semitism. In 1933, she was excluded from participating in the "". The Sezession dissolved itself, rather than expel its Jewish members. In 1937, thirteen of her paintings were confiscated from the Hamburger Kunsthalle as part of the government's "Degenerate Art" campaign. Nine were destroyed. The following year, she was banned from the Reich Chamber of Culture, and was forbidden to take part in any exhibitions.

When Siegmund died, it became necessary to move. She was able to share an apartment with her brother-in-law, , a civil servant who had been forced to resign from his positions in the local fishing industry. Shortly after, she was placed under house arrest. During this time, she began to suffer from heart problems, and was too weak to consider emigrating. When she found herself facing deportation to Theresienstadt, she committed suicide with an overdose of morphine.

She was interred in the Lübbert family plot at Ohlsdorf Cemetery. A memorial stolperstein has been placed in front of her last residence. In 1985, a small street was named after her in Hamburg's Bergedorf district."Del-Banco-Kehre"
@ OnlineStreet

Selected paintings

Banco, Alma del - Japanerin - Hamburger Kunsthalle.jpg, Japanese Woman (1910)
Alma del Banco - Hamburg (ca.1912).jpg, Hamburg (c.1912)
Alma del Banco Blick ueber Blankenese auf die Elbe.jpg, View of the Elbe from the Süllberg Terrace in Blankenese (1918)
Alma del Banco - Taormina (1918-22).jpg, Taormina (1918–1922)
Banco, Alma del - Hunzinger, August Wilhelm.jpg, (1920)
Alma del Banco - Rote und gelbe Segel (Segelschiffe in Cuxhafen).jpg, Red and Yellow Sails (c.1922)
Alma del Banco - Mädchen mit roter Schleife.jpg, Girl with a Red Ribbon (1925)
Alma del Banco Fischerboote im Hafen.jpg, Fishing Boats in the Harbor (c.1925)

References

Further reading

* Friederike Weimar: ''Alma del Banco (1862–1943). Eine Hamburger Künstlerin'', Wachholtz, Neumünster (2011)

External links

Portrait of Del Banco
by Ernst Eitner. Not public domain until 2026.

More works by Del Banco
@ ArtNet
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Banco, Alma del
1862 births
1943 suicides
1943 deaths
Artists from Hamburg
German women painters
Drug-related suicides
Suicides in Germany
Jewish painters