Hanna Bekker vom Rath (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

vom Rath; 7 September 18938 August 1983) was a German painter, collector, patron and gallerist.

Personal life

Hanna vom Rath, born in Frankfurt, Germany married the music critic

Paul Bekker Max Paul Eugen Bekker (11 September 1882 – 7 March 1937) was a German music critic and author. Described as having "brilliant style and ..extensive theoretical and practical knowledge," Bekker was chief music critic for both the ''Frankfurt ...

(1882–1937) in 1920 and they moved to Hofheim am Taunus, near Frankfurt/Main. They had three children. In 1930 the marriage ended in divorce.

Career

Bekker vom Rath began studying painting with

Ottilie Roederstein Ottilie Wilhelmine Roederstein (22 April 1859 – 26 November 1937) was a German-Swiss painter. She was the long-time companion of Elisabeth Winterhalter, one of the first female doctors in Germany. Life Roederstein was born in Zürich, Switze ...

in Hofheim, Hesse. During World War I, she moved to

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, Baden-Württemberg, where she studied under

Ida Kerkovius Ida Kerkovius (1879–1970) was a Baltic German painter and weaver from Latvia. Life Kerkovius was one of twelve children born to an upper-class Baltic German family. She was taught piano at an all-girls secondary school before attending a priv ...

and

Adolf Hölzel Adolf Richard Hölzel (13 May 1853 – 17 October 1934) was a German painter. He began as a Realist, but later became an early promoter of various Modern styles, including Abstractionism. Biography Hölzel was born in Olmütz. His father was ...

. Bekker vom Rath's portfolio includes "still lifes, portraits and landscapes, in styles ranging from Expressionism to New Objectivity".

Artist patron and art collector

In the twenties she became friends with Ludwig Meidner, Alexej von Jawlensky,

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Karl Schmidt until 1905; 1 December 1884 – 10 August 1976) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker; he was one of the four founders of the artist group Die Brücke. Life and work Schmidt-Rottluff was born in ...

, Emy Roeder, among others. Initially spontaneous support for individual artists later condensed into a sustained mission. She purchased works, invited the painters and art collectors to her Blue House in Hofheim. In 1929 she founded the "Society of Friends of the Art of Alexej von Jawlensky" in Wiesbaden. Jawlensky's catalog raisonné documents a painting with dedication to Bekker vom Rath. She received the painting, "Variation: Von Fruehling, Glueck und Sonne," as a Christmas gift in 1929. Between 1940 and 1943 Bekker vom Rath organized secret exhibitions of works by the ostracized in her Berlin studio apartment on Regensburger Strasse. In the twenties she started collecting work of ''

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

'', such as from '' Bruecke'' and ''

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 2009), , pp. ...

'':

, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Adolf Hoelzel, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann and many more. Later international and also younger artists were included. In 1987 many of these works became part of the collection of the Museum Wiesbaden.

Art dealer and ambassador of art

Inspired by the '' avant-garde'' and moved by their persecution under the Nazi Party, she organised clandestine art exhibitions during the war. In 1947 she founded the Frankfurt Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath. It initially provided a forum for artist friends defamed as degenerate under the National Socialist regime. Her circle of artists and friends now included Ernst Wilhelm Nay, who settled in Hofheim from 1945 to 1952, the photographer Marta Hoepffner, who opened her private photography school there, and their teacher Willi Baumeister. Ludwig Meidner, who returned from exile, also lived in a district of Hofheim between 1955 and 1963. She re-established contact with the emigrated artists, collectors and art dealers and discovered through their reports and during her first trips to France and Switzerland that many artist emigrants had not been noticed abroad due to the twelve years of dictatorship in their host countries. Beginning in 1952, she went on exhibition trips presenting those once ostracized and young artists in North and South America, South Africa, India, Greece, and the Middle East, becoming known as an "ambassador of art."

External links

Hanna Bekker vom Rath

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bekker vom Rath, Hanna 1893 births 1983 deaths German women painters 20th-century German painters 20th-century German women artists Artists from Frankfurt Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany