Rachel Stern2020-07-29T09:13:41-04:00May 27th, 2020|Events, Past Events|
Watch the video of this zoom event HERE Lecture featuring Karen Wilkin, Independent Curator and Critic Moderated by Rachel Stern, Director of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) first arrived in the US from Munich in 1930, to teach a summer art course at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned twice more, extending his 1932 visit to pursue teaching opportunities. In 1933, he decided to remain in the US, opening the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in 1934. He did not return to Europe until 1949, for an exhibition in France, and to Germany until 1962, for a touring retrospective. Before coming to America, Hofmann had only drawn for 15 years, because of the [...]
Rachel Stern2020-03-03T09:23:23-05:00January 25th, 2019|Events, Past Events|
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. Watch the video of the event here. 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 [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:15:18-05:00December 21st, 2017|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Today I am excited to share with you some photos of last week’s opening of “Beauteous Strivings: Fritz Ascher, Works on Paper”, which is on view at the New York Studio School daily 10:00am-6:00pm until December 3 (website link). In this exhibition, “powerful emotions seem to lurk just beneath the apparent directness and economy of the tree and flower paintings” of the 1950s and 1960s, observes curator Karen Wilkin in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. She continues: “A sense of near-obsession, of ferocious concentration, of focus that excluded everything else, was palpable, made visible in the traces of his rapidly moving hand, driving across the paper, making loops and whorls, and then abruptly changing direction. At the [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:33:00-05:00September 1st, 2017|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, It was fun to attend the opening of “Hauptstadtfussball” at the Ephraim Palais in Berlin, celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Berlin soccer club Herta BSC and its local rivals. I learned so many things about soccer in Berlin, and about Herta BSC in this creative, well researched exhibition. And you can see Fritz Ascher’s “Soccer Players” from c. 1916! It will be on view until January 8, 2018. link Thank you to Sven Goldmann for bringing Fritz Ascher alive in his full page piece in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel! link Here in New York, the preparations for “‘Beauteous Strivings.’ Fritz Ascher - Works on Paper” at the New York Studio School are in full swing. The New [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:33:53-05:00July 10th, 2017|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Time for the outdoors! What could be timelier than an exhibition about soccer. On July 26th, the Ephraim Palais in Berlin is opening “Hauptstadtfussball,” celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Berlin soccer club Herta BSC and its local rivals. In this exhibition, you can find Fritz Ascher’s “Soccer Players” from c. 1916! It will be on view until January 8, 2018: link Since the last newsletter, Wiebke Hölzer published two essays about Fritz Ascher, one in the Biographisch-Bibliografisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL, vol. 38, Nordhausen 2017), and one called "Kunststück" examining his “Bajazzo” from 1924 in Weltkunst No. 129 from May 2017 (pp. 120-121). And our most accomplished lawyer, the author Nicholas O'Donnell, a veteran attorney and litigation partner at the [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:34:52-05:00July 10th, 2017|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Maybe today’s storm is finally bringing warm weather? Fritz Ascher wrote a poem about the strong winds that spring brings: SPRING WIND As power romps around in space; blustering, boiling, blustering. As it tugs at the clouds, - it rustles forest and fields. As willingly everything submits to this wild child. The field weighs Its life force - ; Winds, - Spring’s windlass! (Poems Vol. 1, undated, p. 42) Siegmund Rotstein, Rachel Stern and Dr. Ingrid Moessinger at the opening of the Fritz Ascher exhibition at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz - MUSEUM GUNZENHAUSER on March 4, 2017. At the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz - MUSEUM GUNZENHAUSER, the Fritz Ascher Retrospective is still on view until June 18. It is the first [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-03T16:06:56-05:00June 30th, 2017|Exhibitions, Past Exhibitions|
For the first time in the United States, this exhibition presents works on paper by the German Expressionist Fritz Ascher (1893-1970). In these landscapes, made after 1945, the artist radically departed from the figural compositions he created during the Weimar years. At the same time, he built on his Expressionist visual language of vigorous brushstrokes and expressive colors. Born 1893 in Berlin, Ascher showed talent early. At the age of 16, he studied with Max Liebermann, who recommended him to the Königsberg Art Academy. Soon after, he studied with Lovis Corinth in Berlin. In contact with such artists as Emil Nolde and Edvard Munch, Ascher developed an expressionist pictorial language and created powerful figural compositions. After 1933, the Jewish-born Ascher [...]
Newsletter #6, May 2016
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:44:40-05:00May 19th, 2016|Newsletter|
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 [...]
