Inspired by two exhibitions: “Art from the Holocaust” in 2016 at the German Historical Museum in Berlin and “The Better Half” 2016/17 at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, Manya Gutman set out to find traces of female Jewish artists in the “age of extremes.”

Many know Sonja Delaunay, Meret Oppenheim or Gisèle Freund. But what about Dora Bromberger, who studied with Hans Hofmann in Munich, was a member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreunde (GEDOK) in Bremen from 1928 and was murdered at the Maly Trostinez extermination camp in 1942? Or Malva Schalek, who recorded everyday life in the camp in Theresienstadt in more than 100 drawings and watercolors? This work was able to survive in secret; she was murdered in Auschwitz. Or the Hamburg artist Anita Rée, who took her own life on December 24, 1933 following a smear campaign by the Hamburg “Tageszeitung”, which publicly defamed her and called her work “un-German.”

The project comprises over 100 drawn portraits, which were created between 2019 and 2023. The accompanying short biographies were created by Ellen Presser, journalist and director of the Cultural Center of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, Dr. Jürgen Kaumkötter and journalist and author Henriette Schröder.

The exhibition catalogue can be ordered from our shop for €29.