Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Six Dancers,"
1911, oil on canvas. VMFA's Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection.
Photo: Katherine Wetzel, © 2009 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
By KATHERINE CALOS (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A major family collection of German Expressionist art "so rare that it is almost indescribable" has found a permanent home at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The gift-purchase of the Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection brings to the museum more than 200 pieces of art from the most creative years of German Expressionism.
Museum Director Alex Nyerges, who deemed it "almost indescribable," says the collection is of "not just national but international importance."
"It is a statement of an era, a statement that cannot really be duplicated. It's a snapshot of time taking us back 100 years to look at one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century. ... This collection represents it so marvelously."
Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke, among others, were collected from 1905 to 1925 by Ludwig and Rosy Fischer in Frankfurt, Germany. Half of their collection escaped the Nazis when a son fled to the United States in 1934 before World War II.
Dr. Ernst Fischer moved to Richmond, bringing his art with him, and became chairman of the physiology department at the Medical College of Virginia.
His brother stayed in Germany about a year longer. Max Fischer's half of the collection was "partly sold, partly confiscated and partly lost," Nyerges said.
"That is the typical route for German collections — and Polish collections and Czech collections — that were subjugated to the Nazi regime. It's amazing, absolutely amazing," he said.
Dr. Fischer's wife, Anne Rosenberg Fischer, children and grandchildren agreed to the giftpurchase arrangement 14 years ago.
The plan took effect last year when Anne
Fischer died at age 105, after a career in social work and community
activism that earned lifetime achievement and humanitarian awards from
the Jewish Welfare Campaign, Jewish Federation, Beth Sholom Home, the
National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the YWCA. The value of the art has increased significantly since the agreement
was reached, to the point that "the most valuable painting in the
collection is probably worth as much as we paid for the entire
collection," said John B. Ravenal, the museum's Sydney and Frances
Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The amount paid
was not disclosed.
Read the rest of the article or watch a preview of the new collection of German Expressionism, with comments from the museum's curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, John B. Ravenal.
