Jeanne Mammen (21 November 1890 – 22 April 1976) was a German painter and illustrator of the
Weimar period
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
. Her work is associated with the
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity (in german: Neue Sachlichkeit) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle'' in Mannheim, wh ...
and
Symbolism
Symbolism or symbolist may refer to:
Arts
* Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism
** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
** Russian sym ...
movements. She is best known for her depictions of strong, sensual women
and Berlin city life.
Life and career
Jeanne Mammen was born in Berlin, the daughter of a successful German merchant. She and her family moved to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
when she was five years old. She studied art in Paris, Brussels and Rome from 1906-1911. Her early work, influenced by Symbolism,
Art Nouveau, and the
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement (Fr. ''décadence'', “decay”) was a late-19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.
The Decadent movement first flourishe ...
, was exhibited in Brussels and Paris in 1912 and 1913.
[Sykora (1988), p. 28.]
In 1916 Mammen and her family fled Paris to avoid
internment during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
While her parents moved to
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
, Mammen chose instead to return to Berlin. She was now financially on her own for the first time, as the French government had confiscated all of her family's property. For several years Mammen struggled to make ends meet, taking any work she could find, and spending time with people from different class backgrounds. These experiences and newfound sympathies are reflected in her artwork from the period.
In time Mammen was able to find work as a commercial artist, producing
fashion plate
A fashion plate is an illustration (a plate) demonstrating the highlights of fashionable styles of clothing. Traditionally they are rendered through etching, line engraving, or lithograph and then colored by hand. To quote historian James Laver ...
s, movie posters, and caricatures for satirical journals such as ''
Simplicissimus
:''Simplicissimus is also a name for the 1668 novel Simplicius Simplicissimus and its protagonist.''
''Simplicissimus'' () was a satirical German weekly magazine, headquartered in Munich, and founded by Albert Langen in April 1896. It continue ...
'', ''
Ulk
The German language satirical magazine ''Ulk'' was printed from 1872 until 1933 by the publisher Rudolf Mosse. Its headquarters was in Berlin, Germany.
Initially it was an independent weekly paper as ''Wochenblatt für Humor und Satire''. It ...
'',
and ''
Jugend''.
In the mid-1920s she became known for her illustrations evoking the urban atmosphere of Berlin. Much of her artwork depicted women. These women subjects often included haughty socialites, fashionable middle-class shop girls, street singers, and prostitutes.
Her drawings were often compared to those of
George Grosz and
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George ...
.
[Sykora (1988), p. 29.] Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s she worked mainly in pencil with watercolor washes, and in pen and ink.
In 1921, Mammen moved into an apartment with her sister in Berlin. This apartment was a former photographer's studio which she lived in until her death.
Aside from Art throughout her life Mammen also was interested in science. She was close friends with
Max Delbrück
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück (; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical scientists' interest int ...
who left Europe and took some of her artwork with him and exhibited them in California. In addition to bringing these art works to be exhibited he also sent Mammen care packages from the United States with art supplies.
In 1930 she had a major exhibition in the
Fritz Gurlitt
Friedrich "Fritz" Gurlitt (3 October 1854 – 8 February 1893), originally from Vienna, was a Berlin based art dealer and collector, specialising, in particular, in contemporary art. After his early death the art gallery he had established in cent ...
gallery.
Over the next two years, at Gurlitt's suggestion, she created one of her most important works: a series of eight lithographs illustrating ''
Les Chansons de Bilitis'', a collection of
lesbian love poems by
Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs (; 10 December 1870 – 4 June 1925) was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who sought to "express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection". ...
.
In 1933, following Mammen's inclusion in an exhibition of female artists in Berlin, the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
authorities denounced her motifs and subjects as "Jewish", and banned her lithographs for ''Les Chansons de Bilitis''.
The Nazis were also opposed to her blatant disregard to for apparent 'appropriate' female submissiveness in her expressions of her subjects. Much of her work also includes imagery of lesbians. The Nazis shut down most of the journals she had worked for,
[Sykora (1988), p. 30.] and she refused to work for those that complied with their cultural policies.
Until the end of the war she practiced a kind of "
inner emigration Inner emigration (german: Innere Emigration, french: émigration intérieure) is a concept of an individual or social group who feels a sense of alienation from their country, its government, and its culture. This can be due to the inner emigrants' ...
". She stopped exhibiting her work and focused on advertising. For a time she also peddled second-hand books from a handcart.
In the 1940s, in a show of solidarity, Mammen began experimenting with
Cubism and
expressionism, a risky move given the Nazis' condemnation of abstract art as "
degenerate
Degeneracy, degenerate, or degeneration may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Degenerate (album), ''Degenerate'' (album), a 2010 album by the British band Trigger the Bloodshed
* Degenerate art, a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party i ...
". After the war she took to collecting wires, string, and other materials from the streets of bombed-out Berlin to create reliefs. In the late 1940s she began exhibiting her work again, as well as designing sets for the ''Die Badewanne'' cabaret. She created abstract collages from various materials, including candy wrappers. In the 1950s she adopted a new style, combining thick layers of oil paint with a few fine marks on the surface.
[Sykora (1988), p. 31.]
In the 1970s there was a resurgence of interest in Mammen's early work as German art historians, as well as art historians of the women's movement, rediscovered her paintings and illustrations from the Weimar period.
In 2013 her later, more abstract work was featured in "Painting Forever!", a large-scale exhibition held during Berlin Art Week.
In 2017–18, the
Berlinische Galerie
The Berlinische Galerie is a museum of modern art, photography and architecture in Berlin. It is located in Kreuzberg, on Alte Jakobstraße, not far from the Jewish Museum.
History
The Berlinische Galerie was founded in 1975 mounted a major exhibition of Mammen's work, titled, "Jeanne Mammen: Die Beobachterin: Retrospektive 1910–1975" (Jeanne Mammen: The Observer: Retrospective 1910–1975), which included more than 170 works in various media, covering the period from the 1920s to her late work in the 1960s and beyond. The show was conceived as an update to a show mounted by the Galerie at the Martin Gropius Bau in 1997, which featured primarily works from the 1920s.
In 2010 the
Des Moines Art Center
The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa.
History
The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines A ...
exhibited 13 water color paintings done by Mammen which were inspired by Berlin in the
Weimer era.
Public collections
*
Berlinische Galerie
The Berlinische Galerie is a museum of modern art, photography and architecture in Berlin. It is located in Kreuzberg, on Alte Jakobstraße, not far from the Jewish Museum.
History
The Berlinische Galerie was founded in 1975
*
Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
*
Des Moines Art Center
The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa.
History
The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines A ...
*
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
*
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
*
Morgan Library & Museum
References
Bibliography
*Förderverein der Jeanne-Mammen-Stiftung e. V., Jeanne Mammen: Paris Bruxelles Berlin, Berlinische Galerie Berlin, 2017
*
*
Further reading
*
* Lütgens, Annelie. "Jeanne Mammen". In: Louise R. Noun (ed.), ''Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen''. Des Moines, Iowa: Des Moines Art Center, 1994.
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mammen, Jeanne
1890 births
1976 deaths
20th-century German painters
20th-century German women artists
20th-century LGBT people
Artists from Berlin
German illustrators
Lesbian artists
German women painters