Gustav Wunderwald

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Gustav Wunderwald, Selfportrait 1914.

Gustav Wunderwald (1 January 1882 - 24 June 1945) was a German painter of the New
Objectivity style, and a theatrical set designer.

Career
The son of the gunsmith Karl Wunderwald and his wife Adelheid n�e Hirtz, Gustav
Wunderwald was born in Kalk, Cologne in 1882. Beginning his artistic career in
1896, Wunderwald began as an apprentice of the Cologne master painter Wilhelm Kuhn.
In 1899 he becamse a scenery painter under Professor Max Bruckner, and from 1900 to
1904 he worked at G. Hartwig's studio for stage painting in Charlottenburg. From
1904 to 1907 he worked as a set designer at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. Then he
joined the Drama and Music Executive Board of the Theatre in D�sseldorf under
Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann. It was here that he also had the first
exhibition of his art, and he met his longtime friend, the Rhenish writer and
playwright Wilhelm Schmidtbonn (1876-1952). In May 1908 he married Amalie Minna
Gerull (1881-1941). With her and the Schmidtbonns he spent the years 1908 to 1909
in Tegernsee.

After leaving his position in D�sseldorf, which had earned him recognition from
renowned theatre critics, he decided to live and work for a year "in nature", as an
experiment. But in 1909 he returned to conventional employment, when he worked
briefly as a member of the technical staff at the Stadttheater Innsbruck. In 1910
he moved to Freiburg, where he held the position of the Chief Stage Painter at the
Municipal Theatre until 1911 . He held an exhibition in the Kunstverein Freiburg in
March 1911. In 1912 Wunderwald made the longed-for career move to Berlin: He worked
as a decorative painter at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in Charlottenburg until 1915,
when he was called up. During World War I he was posted to the Macedonian Front.

Up to the war, in addition to his stage scenery work, Wunderwald created realistic
paintings and drawings of the Rhineland, Tyrol, the Black Forest, Havel and East
Prussian landscapes. He also did figure paintings of his wife, family members and
fellow soldiers. In 1918 Wunderwald realized his lifelong dream; from that time
until his death in 1945 Wunderwald worked as a freelance artist in Charlottenburg.
In 1924 the Berlin Art and Landsberg bookshop displayed 20 of his works in his
first comprehensive solo exhibition. In 1925 and 1926, Wunderwald was represented
at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition, and from 1927 in numerous national exhibitions.
His works dealt with industrial landscapes in the Berlin districts of Moabit and
Wedding, street canyons of Prenzlauer Berg, tenements, houses and back-to-backs in
Spandau. He painted bridges, subways, train stations, billboards, as well as villas
in Charlottenburg. Rural subjects included villages in the immediate vicinity of
Berlin, Havel, Spree and East Prussia landscapes. People were reduced to the role
of anonymous figures seen from behind.

Of this period of his creativity he wrote: "The saddest things hit me in the
stomach. Moabit and Wedding grab me most with their sombreness and desolation"
(1926). In 1927 on the occasion of the group exhibition "The face of Berlin 1926"
at the Neumann & Nierendorf gallery, the art critic Paul Westheim (1886-1963)
devoted a monographic essay to Wunderwald in the January issue of the Art Journal
which he edited, in which he described Wunderwald as "the Berlin Utrillo" a label
that Wunderwald felt flattered him.

The final Wunderwald exhibition before the Second World War took place at the 1934
Great Berlin Art Exhibition. In the Nazi era, his works were disparaged by the
authorities and from 1934 he was not allowed to exhibit or sell work. During this
period he made a living tinting advertising films for Ufa and Mars Film, and looked
after his wife, a seamstress. After her death, Wunderwald married Bertha Ludwig in
1941. However he himself died on 24 June 1945 in Berlin, as a result of
Hyponatremia (water poisoning).

The rediscovery of Wunderwald after the Second World War was the work of Berlin art
chief officer Friedrich Lambart with the 1950 retrospective "Images of Berlin" in
the Zoo in the gardens of the town hall. It was followed by solo exhibitions in
Berlin (house L�tzowplatz, 1962, and Bassenge Gallery, 1971-72), Munich (Gallery
Gunzenhauser, 1972) and from 1965 as a result of the growing interest in the art of
New Objectivity participation in numerous national and international group
exhibitions. The most comprehensive solo exhibition took place at Berlin Gallery in
1982, followed by the St�dtische Galerie, Albstadt in 1982/83 on the occasion of
the 100th birthday of the painter.

Wunderwald's oeuvre comprises some 180 paintings, which are today located primarily
in German private ownership or in the possession of the following museums: Berlin
Gallery, Berlin; New National Gallery, Berlin; Berlin City Museum; City Museum,
Bonn; Hessian State Museum, Darmstadt; the Theatre Studies Collection at the
University of Cologne; Art Forum East German Gallery, Regensburg.

References
Wilhelm Schmidt Bonn: The right to the name, in: The stage, April 8 1909th
Oskar Maurus Fontana: Gustav Wunderwald, in: The flag, 1st year, No. 16, 1910..
Paul West home: Gustav Wunderwald in. The Art Journal, 11 year, No. 1, 1927th
Fritz Burger: Introduction to Modern Art, Potsdam 1928th
Felix Dargel: Berlin without makeup, in:. Dispatch, July 25, 1950 No. 89th
Wilhelm Schmidt Bonn: Gustav Wunderwald, in: Kurt Loup (ed.), The festive home. The
D�sseldorf Schauspielhaus Dumont-Lindemann. Mirror and expression of the time,
Cologne / Bonn 1955th
Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke: memoir of August Macke, Stuttgart 1962nd
Wieland Schmied: New Objectivity and Magic Realism in Germany 1918-1933, Hanover
1969th
Wunderwald Calendar 1982 ed. Information from the centering area of Berlin, Berlin
1981 Texts: Hildegard Reinhardt and Eberhard Roters.
Authority control
WorldCat Identities VIAF: 5724226 LCCN: n80128072 ISNI: 0000 0000 8353 3240 GND:
118635611 SUDOC: 08594999X BNF: cb14501610s (data) ULAN: 500021528 RKD: 85773
Categories: 1882 births1945 deaths
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This page was last edited on 27 November 2017, at 00:24.
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