1947

Berlin: Max Lichtwitz. Very Good. 1947. First Edition. Stiff card boards. 118 pages; Clean and secure in original stiff boards with green cloth spine, white title label at spine printed in red and orange boards printed in white. Unpaginated. Frontispiece, plus 74 b&w reproductions, 7 colour reproductions. OCLC 1230459785 Introduction by Will Grohmann. Design by Prof. Kurt Tillessen. Artists exhibited include Ernst Geitlinger, Edgar Ehses, Jeanne Mammen, Otto Hofmann, Wolfgang Frankenstein, Negro sculpture, Hans Thiemann, Herbert Spangenberg, Wilhelm Haerlin, Herbert Mhe, Hans Kuhn, Luise S. Stomps, Theodor Werner, Hans Uhlmann; plus the 2nd Annual Gerd Rosen Group Artists Show with works from Willi Baumeister, Alexander Camaro, Edgar Ehses, Wolfgang Frankenstein, Ernst Geitlinger, Karl Otto Gotz, Karl Hartung, Werner Heldt, Itto Hofmann, Jure Kubicek, Hans Kuhn, Curt Lahs, Jeanne Mammen, E.W. Nay, Herbert Spangenberg, Luise Sophie Stomps, Paul Strecker, Christian Theunert, Hans Thiemann, Heinz Trokes, Hans Uhlmann, Theodor Wener and Mac Zimmermann. The Gerd Rosen Gallery, an art gallery of modernism and avant-garde art of the 20th century, opened on August 9, 1945 at Kurfürstendamm 215 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the first post-war gallery in Germany. The gallery was founded by the bookseller Gerd Rosen, art collector and businessman Max Leon Flemming and the artist Heinz Trökes, Ilse-Margret Vogel was also involved. The Gallery's first exhibition included artists who had been considered "degenerate" under Nazi rule. Gerd Rosen (1903-1961) attended university in Berlin and trained as a bookseller in the Wasmuth bookstore. In 1925 he became head of the Antiquarian Bookshop in the Wertheim Department Store. Aryanization resulted in Gerd Rosen, with his Jewish heritage, losing his job. He moved to Vienna in 1933 and worked in the bookshop founded by Hans Peter Kraus from 1932 until 1938, when he was imprisoned. After the war, Rosen received a concession to run an antiquarian bookshop in Germany, but also received an entry permit for the USA. At his wife's request, they stayed in Germany.Primarily a bookseller, Rosen received special permits for gallery exhibitions. The Rosen Gallery soon became the center of Berlin's art avant-garde. Here, artists exhibited who until recently had been banned from painting and whose pictures had been removed from exhibitions and museums and some of them destroyed. .