Galerie Alfred Flechtheim Exhibtion Catalog: Pablo Picasso. Zeichnungen. Aquarelle. Pastelle

Berlin: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, 1927. First edition. Softcover. Very good condition. Duodecimos (6 x 4 5/8"). Original yellow illustrated stapled wraps with red lettering on cover, protected by modern mylar. The catalog features b/w reproductions of artwork. Text in German.

Pablo Picasso. Zeichnungen-Aquarelle-Pastelle 1902-1927. Berlin. 16pp. Light yellow wraps with drawing by Picasso in red on cover. With an address by Alfred Flechtheim, explaining the necessity of loaning Picasso work to curate an exhibition representative of his twenty-five years of work, including list of donors. Contains a text on Picasso's drawings by Jean Cassou. Contains fourteen reproductions of work by Picasso. Includes catalog of works. Flechtheim announcements on back cover.

Exhibition catalog of Germany's preeminent art gallery of the early 20th Century. Flechtheim opened his first gallery in 1913 in Düsseldorf, followed by galleries in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and Vienna. Flechtheim's business collapsed due to the perils of W.W.I. Alfred Flechtheim reopened his gallery in Düsseldorf after the war in 1919.

Flechtheim had made a name for himself when organizing the International Art Exhibition of the "Sonderbund" for West-German Friends of the Art and Artists opening on May 5th, 1912, in Cologne, featuring the avant-garde artists and movements of the time. Flechtheim emerged on the art scene shortly after 1900 with a collection of works by van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, Braque, Derain, Kandinsky, de Vlaminck, von Jawlensky, Münter, Campendonk and others.

After the Nazis rise to power in 1933 Flechtheim emigrated to Paris and in 1935 connected to Alfred Barr, director of the New York Museum of Modern Art, informing him that he had lost all his money and artwork. Flechtheim and his former gallery assistant Curt Valentin, with financial backing of Karl Buchholz, brokered a deal with the Nazis to sell confiscated degenerate art for the war effort and subsequently the opening of the Karl Buchholz Gallery in New York, leading to controversy in New York. Flechtheim died in London from complications of an accident in 1937.