Henri Matisse

Sep 29, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter OCTOBER 2025

2026-01-04T06:01:04-05:00September 29th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter OCTOBER 2025

Dear Friends, September isn't over yet, and our programming isn't either, with the virtual event about the architect of the Knesset, Ossip Klarwein, re-scheduled to happen tomorrow. For the Jews among us, the High Holy Days will dominate this month, a time to pause, to look inward, and to recommit ourselves to the values of compassion, justice, and peace. At the Fritz Ascher Society, we continue to feature untold stories of artists marginalized and persecuted by the German Nazi regime, and inspire conversations and discussions of high relevance today. To watch the stories told in past events, you can visit our YouTube channel @fritzaschersociety, or our online exhibition IDENTITY, ART AND MIGRATION, which now includes the artist Samson [...]

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Jul 10, 2025

Matisse at War. Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France
Book talk by Christopher C. Gorham

2025-10-22T14:46:04-04:00July 10th, 2025|, , |Comments Off on Matisse at War. Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France
Book talk by Christopher C. Gorham

In this book talk, author Christopher C. Gorham speaks about the artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and his steadfastness to live and work during the years of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France. When the Degenerate Art exbibit opened in Munich in the summer of 1937, works by notable foreign modernists were denigrated along with German artists. Henri Matisse’s Blue Window (1913) was legally seized by the Nazi regime for inclusion in the traveling exhibit, and his work was banned from German museums. Henri Matisse was among the modernists derided by the Nazis. That did not stop them from stealing his art. At the Jeu de Paume Museum, Paris, [...]

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Dec 22, 2024

Making Way for Berthe Weill—
Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde
A presentation by Lynn Gumpert, New York

2025-01-22T13:31:12-05:00December 22nd, 2024|, , |Comments Off on Making Way for Berthe Weill—
Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde
A presentation by Lynn Gumpert, New York

Berthe Weill was a trailblazing art dealer who exhibited works by emerging artists in her Parisian gallery from 1901 to 1941. Even though many of them went on to become key avant-garde figures, Weill’s role has been omitted from most historical accounts of 20th-century modernism. In this presentation, Lynn Gumpert, a co-curator of the first exhibition on Weill, provides an overview of this remarkable woman. Image above: Amedeo Modigliani, Fille rousse (Girl with red hair), c. 1915. Oil on canvas, 16 x 14 3/8 in. (40.5 x 36.5 cm). Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Jean Walter and Paul Guillame Collection, 1960.46 © Photo: Musée de l’Orangerie / Sophie Crépy Passionate and outspoken, Weill was the [...]

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Sep 4, 2018

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #22, September 2018

2018-11-26T05:40:08-05:00September 4th, 2018|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #22, September 2018

Dear Friends, I know, this summer I seem obsessed with Fritz Ascher’s I know, this summer I seem obsessed with Fritz Ascher’s Dancers from 1921. But there is one more thought about the drawing that I want to share. Fritz Ascher, Dancers, 1921. Private collection. Photo Malcolm Varon ©2018 Bianca Stock Fritz Ascher, Dancers, 1921. Private collection. Photo Malcolm Varon ©2018 Bianca Stock When the drawing was created,“Freikörperkultur” (FKK) or “free body culture” had become popular in Germany. Founded in 1898 in Essen, Germany, the nudist culture was about celebrating the body unencumbered by clothes, in nature and sunlight. Many of the naturists came from the Wandervogel movement, the pre-eminent German youth movement, founded to escape the repressive and [...]

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Jul 4, 2018

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #21, July 2018

2018-12-04T12:17:07-05:00July 4th, 2018|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #21, July 2018

Dear Friends,I am so very excited today to share new insights into Fritz Ascher’s work. Fritz Ascher’s Dancers from 1921 is a drawing that has dazzled and fascinated me since I saw it first. In the Fritz Ascher exhibition catalogue, I described the eight female and male dancers as “dancing in a circle in naked ecstasy,” “mythical figures in timeless space” (p. 220). Looking at Ascher’s drawing, Henri Matisse’s Dance from 1910 comes to mind, where “the rhythm of the bodies swaying in dance becomes the sole theme of a painting for the first time.” Commonly recognized as a key point of Matisse's career and in the development of modern painting, it was painted for the Russian businessman and art [...]

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