Fritz Ascher Society

Feb 28, 2017

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #11, January 2017

2018-12-04T12:36:20-05:00February 28th, 2017|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #11, January 2017

Dear Friends, Thank you for supporting us with your interest in our work, reading our newsletters and publications and/or visiting our exhibitions, and - last not least - supporting our work financially. 2016 was the first year that our work started showing, with the participation in the exhibition Verfahren. "Wiedergutmachung" im geteilten Berlin / »Making Amends« Compensation and Restitution Cases in Divided Berlin at Aktives Museum Berlin (October 9, 2015 - January 14, 2016) and Landgericht Berlin/Amtsgericht Mitte, Berlin (September 29 - November 18, 2016) and the long anticipated first ever retrospective with its comprehensive catalogue (link) "Leben ist Glühn" Der Expressionist Fritz Ascher / “To Live is to Blaze with Passion" The Expressionist Fritz Ascher at the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus Osnabrück [...]

Jan 12, 2017

“Leben ist Glühn” Der Expressionist Fritz Ascher 


Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz MUSEUM GUNZENHAUSER, Chemnitz (Germany)

2018-12-03T16:21:23-05:00January 12th, 2017|, |Comments Off on “Leben ist Glühn” Der Expressionist Fritz Ascher 


Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz MUSEUM GUNZENHAUSER, Chemnitz (Germany)

The worldwide first Fritz Ascher Retrospective is on view at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz - MUSEUM GUNZENHAUSER from March 5 to June 18, 2017. (website link) The main focus of the presentation at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz - MUSEUM GUNZENHAUSER is on the artist's important early masterworks like "Golgatha" (1915), "Bajazzo and Artists" (ca. 1916) and "The Tortured" (ca. 1916). For the first time ever, Fritz Ascher’s “Golem” from the collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin will here be reunited with other works the artist created between 1913 and 1933. The Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz is home to an important collection of German Expressionism, dominated by artwork of the locally founded Expressionist group Brücke and especially Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, who grew up in Chemnitz, along [...]

Dec 7, 2016

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #10, December, 2016

2018-12-04T12:38:08-05:00December 7th, 2016|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #10, December, 2016

Dear Friends, As the holiday season is upon us, we at the Fritz Ascher Society had an exciting discovery: the gouache of a “Male Head” to the left appeared at auction in November. Even though it is not signed or dated, we recognize the gouache as a study for Fritz Ascher’s “Golem” from 1916. The features of the “Male Head” appear both in the Golem itself, as well as in the person on the left. The original graphite drawing from 1916 was later painted over with red, green, blue and black ink by the artist himself. He did this most probably in the late 1940s, when the artist repeatedly reworked previously done works on canvas and paper. Fritz Ascher, “Male [...]

Jul 28, 2016

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #7, July 2016

2018-12-04T12:43:56-05:00July 28th, 2016|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #7, July 2016

Dear Friends, Today we are all about literature. 400 years ago the poet William Shakespeare died (1564-1616). Ever since, the dramatic scenes in his plays have inspired many artists’ brush and pen, like William Turner, Edvard Munch, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth. Fritz Ascher drew scenes from Shakespeare’s "King John“, "King Richard II." and "Henry IV." He is almost certainly inspired by numerous performances, especially in Berlin. Most famous was the Austrian theater producer Max Reinhardt, who staged Shakespeare's plays at the "Deutsches Theater" and the "Großes Schauspielhaus". The drawing below shows the stage in the right background; in the foreground a man and a woman sit in a box, the rest of the audience sits below. Stage plays have [...]

May 19, 2016

Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Newsletter #6, May 2016

2018-12-04T12:44:40-05:00May 19th, 2016|Newsletter|Comments Off on Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Newsletter #6, May 2016

Dear Friends, As we are drawn to spend more time outside in the lovely spring weather, this newsletter is all about Fritz Ascher’s late landscapes that became the focus of his work after 1945. Trees, late 1950s ©Bianca Stock, Munich Frank Auerbach, Mornington Crescent Looking South, 1997 ©Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine Art In dozens and dozens of intense paintings and gouaches intoxicated with color, Ascher turns to nature painting in the broadest sense. Among them are landscapes, woodland scenes, portraits of individual trees, groups of trees, all inspired by hours of walking in the nearby Grunewald. In his catalogue essay accompanying the upcoming Fritz Ascher retrospective, Eckhart Gillen relates the aesthetic practice and behavior of the two painters Fritz [...]

Feb 4, 2016

Fritz Ascher Society Newsletter #5, February 2016

2018-12-04T12:45:14-05:00February 4th, 2016|Newsletter|Comments Off on Fritz Ascher Society Newsletter #5, February 2016

Dear Friends, As I am writing this newsletter, the snow is (still) melting here in New York after one of the largest snow storms in recent history. At the same time, Carnival is in the air - at least for our German friends. What better moment to introduce Fritz Ascher's clowns - a theme that occupied the artist throughout his career. It was certainly no coincidence that Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci" (Clowns) was hugely popular in Weimar Republic Berlin - especially the performances with the best known Tenor of his time, Enrico Caruso, as Canio. Fritz Ascher, Bajazzo, 1916 In the opera, Canio, the head of a troupe of comedians, finds out that his wife Nedda has an affair with [...]

Dec 17, 2015

Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Newsletter #4 December 2015

2018-12-04T12:45:51-05:00December 17th, 2015|Newsletter|Comments Off on Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Newsletter #4 December 2015

Dear Friends, As the days are getting shorter and darker, and will at some point probably get colder as well, I remember fondly this past summer, when I had the chance to discover the vastness and diversity of the Grunewald, the largest city forest in Berlin, with Dr. Gudrun Rademacher, the long term director of the Forest Museum Grunewald. Within minutes Fritz Ascher was there, and he often walked for hours, usually in the early mornings or late at night. He documents in his art what he sees: heavy-trunked trees stand in open landscape, shaken by the wind, deep in leaf, or winterly bare. Dr. Rademacher discovered gouaches of the Forest Museum, the Hunting Castle with its signature orange roof, [...]

Oct 25, 2015

Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Newsletter #3 October 2015

2016-12-08T00:03:24-05:00October 25th, 2015|Newsletter|Comments Off on Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Newsletter #3 October 2015

Best wishes to our Jewish friends in 5776! May it be a good and peaceful year for everyone. EXHIBITION A few days ago, the exhibition "»Making Amends« Compensation and Restitutions in a Divided Berlin" was opened at the Gedenkstätte deutscher Widerstand in Berlin. The exhibition, which was organized by a team of the Aktives Museum and the Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz Berlin is celebrating the 70th anniversary of the liberation from the Nazi terror regime with this in-depth examination of the practice of restitution after 1945. Especially in Berlin, where during the Cold War two completely different concepts of restitution existed side-by-side, their political framework and its consequences for the restitution procedures can be demonstrated like nowhere else. [...]

Dec 23, 2014

2014, December 17 – Cathryn J. Prince in The Times of Israel

2018-12-04T12:46:50-05:00December 23rd, 2014|Select Press Coverage|Comments Off on 2014, December 17 – Cathryn J. Prince in The Times of Israel

If not for the Nazis, he may have been the next Leonardo German Expressionist painter Fritz Ascher survived the Holocaust, but his career never recovered. A new foundation is trying to change that by Cathryn J. Prince   NEW YORK – “Artist, interrupted” — two words that describe the accomplished German Expressionist painter Fritz Ascher, a Berlin-born artist who was persecuted, ostracized and banned under the Nazi regime. But now, if Rachel Stern has her way, Fritz Ascher will be “artist, re-discovered. “The intensity, the strong energy, the colors, the forms,” Stern said recalling the first time she saw his work in the mid-80s. It was love at first sight. In fact, Ascher’s work so touched Stern she started researching the [...]