Dave2019-04-07T07:43:51+00:00April 3rd, 2019|
April 3, 2019, 6:30-7:30pm J. English Cook: Gallery Conversation Grey Art Gallery at NYU, New York (please add map) Please join J. English Cook, Graduate Curatorial Assistant, Grey Art Gallery, and Ph.D. Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU for a gallery conversation. The event is sponsored by the Grey Art Gallery, New York University and The Fritz Ascher Society. It is part of Wunderbar Together: The Year of German-American Friendship 2018/19, an initiative of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the Goethe-Institut, with the support of the Federation of German Industries (BDI).
Rachel Stern2019-03-26T08:33:22+00:00March 26th, 2019|Select Press Coverage|
NYC-ARTS News: February 28 – March 7 Televised news segment about Fritz Ascher: Expressionist on Channel Thirteen’s NYC-ARTS program. Arts news highlights: “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection” at Brooklyn Museum; “Ajijaak on Turtle Island” at The New Victory Theater; “Fritz Ascher: Expressionist” at Grey Art Gallery; “One. One & One” at Baryshnikov Arts Center. AIRED: 3/1/2019 | 0:07:01 Watch Video
Rachel Stern2019-03-26T08:09:16+00:00March 26th, 2019|Select Press Coverage|
"What If? The Life And Work of Fritz Ascher Part II" http://artwithhillary.blogspot.com (scroll down for translation into German) Fritz Ascher (1893 - 1970), Untergehende Sonne (Sunset), c. 1960, oil on canvas, 49.2 × 50 in. ( 125 × 126 cm) Private collection. Photo: Malcolm Varon. © Bianca Stock This is Part II of the blog post on the exhibition Fritz Ascher: Expressionist at New York University's Grey Art Gallery. Please see ArtWithHillary, February 2019 for Part I. From 1942 until the end of the war in 1945, Fritz Ascher (1893 - 1970) was hidden from the Nazis by Martha Grassman (1881 - 1971). Her home was in Grunewald, a famous forest area of Berlin noted for its pine and oak trees. In [...]
Rachel Stern2019-03-26T08:08:38+00:00March 25th, 2019|Select Press Coverage|
"What If? The Life And Work of Fritz Ascher Part I" http://artwithhillary.blogspot.com (scroll down for translation into German) Fritz Ascher (1893 - 1970), Untergehende Sonne (Sunset), c. 1960, oil on canvas, 49.2 × 50 in. ( 125 × 126 cm) Private collection. Photo: Malcolm Varon. © Bianca Stock The current exhibition Fritz Ascher: Expressionist at New York University's Grey Art Gallery is artistically impressive and historically important. Accordingly, ArtWithHillary February 2019 and ArtWithHillary March 2019 are devoted to an account of the show. The artist Fritz Ascher (1893 - 1970) suffered through a horrific period of time from 1933 through 1945 in which he was prohibited from producing art. No one will leave the exhibit without thinking what if the artist had [...]
Rachel Stern2019-03-18T14:20:11+00:00March 18th, 2019|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Catch it while you can: The exhibition “Fritz Ascher, Expressionist” at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University here in New York is on view only until April 6. You can find installation photos of the exhibition on our website (link). And for the last minute people among you: on April 3 at 6:30pm there is a gallery conversation with J. English Cook, Graduate Curatorial Assistant, Grey Art Gallery, and Ph.D. Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. In the exhibition, you can see Fritz Ascher’s gouache “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It depicts a settlement of 1,100 flats and 800 detached houses in Berlin Zehlendorf that borders the Grunewald city forest in the South. It was built in [...]
Rachel Stern2019-04-07T08:01:56+00:00March 6th, 2019|
Panel Discussion: Expressionism for Our Time New York Studio School, 8 West 8th Street Wednesday, March 6, 6:30–7:30 pm Expressionism for Our Time features a brief history of Western Expressionism by art critic and curator Karen Wilkin, followed by a conversation between contemporary artists Rochelle Feinstein, Judy Glantzman, and Adrianne Rubenstein with art historian Robert Slifkin. Karen Wilkin is an independent curator and critic, a regular contributor to New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, and Hudson Review. She teaches the New York Studio School’s MFA art history seminars. Robert Slifkin is Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. His book Out of Time: Philip Guston and the Refiguration of Postwar American Art (University of California Press, 2013) [...]
Rachel Stern2019-02-15T10:25:48+00:00February 15th, 2019|Select Press Coverage|
"Finally Home with the Greats. An exhibition places the under-the-radar Fritz Ascher squarely in the canon of 20th-century German artists.” (scroll down for translation into German) ‘Golgotha’ (1915), by Fritz Ascher, in which inflections of Pieter Bruegel the Elder coalesce with James Ensor to create a scene of pandemonium and horror. ©Bianca Stock For those of us who consider themselves familiar with German Expressionism, the compelling new exhibition at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, “Fritz Ascher: Expressionist,” makes us wonder why this artist hasn’t been on our radar screens. The 67 works of art on display, along with sketchbooks and documentary materials, may not quite qualify as a discovery, but they significantly [...]
Rachel Stern2019-02-12T06:24:36+00:00February 12th, 2019|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, What was it like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany? Come join the discussion tomorrow, February 12, at 6:30 pm, when I speak with Marion Kaplan, Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History, NYU, about those who went underground, including Fritz Ascher, and endured the terrors of nightly bombings, hunger and cold, and the even greater fear of being discovered by the Nazis. At King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South. This program accompanies the exhibition “Fritz Ascher, Expressionist” at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University here in New York - please check out the other stimulating programs here. And do not forget to see the exhibition, which is on view [...]
Rachel Stern2019-02-18T17:23:54+00:00January 29th, 2019|
“In the Country of Numbers. Where the Men have no Names” tells the story of the detention and exile of November pogrom prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the basis of twelve individual destinies. One of those individuals is Fritz Ascher. The interviews presented in the exhibition with children and grandchildren of the persecuted as well as family biographical photos and documents are new material first shown in Germany, which was researched in the USA, Great Britain and Israel. More than 6,300 Jewish men were brought to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after the November pogroms in 1938. After a few weeks, the vast majority was set free, with the condition to emigrate immediately from Germany. Many have therefore [...]
Rachel Stern2019-01-14T00:10:25+00:00December 27th, 2018|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, I am filled with gratitude for your interest and support that enabled us this year to initiate and organize five exhibitions, numerous lectures and exhibition tours, two world premiere concerts featuring musical interpretations of Fritz Ascher’s poems by Potsdam composer Gisbert Näther, as well as the emotional ceremony placing a stumbling block in front of Niklasstraße 21/23 in Berlin-Zehlendorf memorizing Fritz Ascher at the location of his parental home. Thank you to everyone who made these events possible! Thank you to Wolfgang Gustavus, whose unexpected death deeply saddens us, for donating works by Fritz Ascher to the Potsdam Museum and Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Berlin. As 2018 is winding down, I hope you are enjoying some peace and fun [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-03T16:06:56+00:00September 30th, 2018|
Last German venue! (link) At the Kallmann-Museum, a representative group of powerful paintings and drawings spans Ascher's whole oeuvre from first academic studies to monumental Expressionist figure compositions to late landscapes. Fritz Ascher's poems, written while hiding from Nazi persecution, can be discovered as "unpainted paintings" in relation to his artwork. With this exhibition, the Kallmann-Museum continues its examination of artists who became victims of the National Socialist art policy. Photos by Gerald Förtsch, Rasmus Kleine and Rachel Stern. A comprehensive German/English catalogue with essays by Jörn Barfod, Eckhart Gillen, Wiebke Hölzer, Ingrid Mössinger, Ori Z. Soltes and Rachel Stern accompanies the exhibition. (catalogue link) The Fritz Ascher retrospective was on view at the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus in Osnabrück (September 25, [...]
Rachel Stern2019-02-05T12:43:50+00:00September 29th, 2018|
The exhibition "Umkämpfte Wege der Moderne. Wilhelm Schmid und die Novembergruppe" is dedicated to the controversial epoch of 1918-1933 and the radical changes during the following period. (link) Some of the artistic pioneers took the 1918/1919 revolution as an opportunity to unite as the "November Group", probably the most prominent political artistic group of the Weimar Republic. These self-proclaimed "revolutionaries of the mind" set out on new paths of artistic expression with their motives, colors and forms, rejecting the old imperial conventions in form and content. The members of the group not only caused a sensation with their revolutionary demand to participate in the new state in all art-related issues. For in the exhibitions - primarily at the Great Berlin [...]
