In 1905 four architecture students in Dresden formed an artists’ communal group known as Die Brücke, or the Bridge. These progressive-minded artists were united by a vision of fusing their German artistic heritage with contemporary visual trends. The six members principally associated with the Brücke—Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Hermann Max Pechstein, Otto Mueller, and Emil Nolde—demonstrated a preference for expressive compositions, technical innovations within the mediums of painting, sculpture, and printmaking, and the desire to unify art and life. In time, the Brücke’s prolific graphic contributions became the hallmark on which their artistic renown was built in Germany.
Brücke members actively sought recognition abroad with the help of art dealers, museum professionals, and private collectors. Their American reception, however, was stymied by historical circumstances, including two World Wars, Adolf Hitler’s denouncement of the artists as “degenerate,” American partiality for French art, and strained U.S. socio-political relations with Germany. Despite these challenges, significant institutional collections of the Brücke artists’ graphic work dating from both their time as a cohesive artist group to their subsequent individual careers after the dissolution of the group in 1913, were formed in the United States. This study examines the formation of three of the most important of these at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
These museums were selected not only for their notable collections of Brücke prints, but also due to their significant locations, interesting demographics, and history of patronage. The Museum of Modern Art amassed most of their Brücke prints through the wealthy patronage of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and choices of curator Alfred H. Barr, Jr., both of whom relied on the expertise of a number of Jewish émigré dealers living in New York. The influence of German Jews in New York on the establishment of MoMA’s collection of graphics by the Brücke members is particularly significant. Although the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection of such works was largely donated by German immigrants or German Americans living in the Midwest during the early half of the century, the details of this patronage were dissimilar. While New York boasted a higher population of both Germans and Jews than Chicago, those living in the mid-West remained less assimilated, and actively strove to maintain characteristics of their ethnic heritage. These cultural conditions, as well as the alternate personal motivations of non-Jewish German American donors and curators, including Henry Regnery and Carl O. Schniewind, led to the formation of the AIC’s collection of the Brücke artists’ prints.
The National Gallery of Art’s collection of Brücke graphics stems largely from two pivotal bequests by clothier Lessing J. Rosenwald and artist Jacob Kainen and his wife Ruth Cole Kainen. Rosenwald, a Jewish American of German descent born in Chicago, as well as the Chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company until 1939, devoted himself to collecting rare books and art, pledging the bulk of his prints by the Brücke artists to the NGA between 1943 and 1954. As the National Gallery did not open until 1941, Rosenwald’s patronage was essential to the founding of the nation’s renowned print collection. As a professional print curator and as a printmaker whose WPA-honed social conscience allowed him to identify with the graphic expressiveness of the Brücke artists, Jacob Kainen’s collecting habits were both ethically and aesthetically-driven, and the contributions he and his wife made reflect this motivation and his own expertise.
In the course of this study, the appeal of German Expressionism as an alternative to modern French art, fundamental questions regarding the role of ethnicity and heritage in the acquisition motives of key patrons, and the influence of dealers and museum professionals in this history converge. The most out-spoken advocates for the Brücke artists’ graphic output in this country were Germans intent on maintaining aspects of their heritage in their new homeland, and émigré Jewish dealers and collectors who promoted such art as a means of retaining intellectual ties to the homeland that rejected them. Institutional collecting practices of the Brücke artists’ prints in the United States were linked to these issues of nationality, class, race, and individual preference.