us-005578-irn61186-irn403
type: RecordSet
physical characterisitics and technical requirements: Mixed media drawing on paper depicting, in the right foreground, a man behind barbed wire, in peasant dress, baggy blouse, boots, and a floppy hat that obscures his face, with a sack on his back. His right hand grasps a brown bread loaf and is stretched into a gap between barbed wire fences. In the left foreground stands a woman, also behind a wire fence, reaching toward the bread. She is dressed in a longsleeved brown coat, with a black hat and stockings, and 2 small children in hats, coats and pants, stand by her side. Both adults have pink-brown painted flesh, although the woman's face is brown. The children are less distinct, and the smaller is mostly a black outline. The barbed wire twists and turns, covering the entire scene and barbed wire coils on the ground between the fences. The fence posts are white painted tree trunks. In the far background are 3 buildings and several line drawn figures. The dark skyline has patches of blue with white highlights, mountain peaks and a central yellow, blue, and orange patch of paint. The artist’s signature is in the lower right corner. The drawing is adhered to brown paper, 11 by 14 inches, with handwritten text and 2 stamps on the back. front, lower left corner, pencil : „GURS” back, lower left corner, handwritten, black pencil : “GURS” II back, lower right corner, handwritten, black pencil : Wollheim back, upper right corner, stamped, black ink : Gerth Wollheim / ART GALLERY and STUDIO / 97 FORT WASHINGTON AVE. / NEW YORK 32. N.Y. / WA 7-9450 / (APPOINTMENT ONLY) back, upper right corner, stamped, black ink, with black X drawn over it : Gerth Wollheim / ART GALLERY and STUDIO / 247 WADSWORTH AVE. (crossed out) / NEW YORK 33. (crossed out) N.Y. / WA 7-9450 / (APPOINTMENT ONLY)
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
conditions of use: Restrictions on use
date: 1940 November 01-1940 December 31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had subject: 1980
has record set type: Item
history: Gert Heinrich Wollheim was born on September 11, 1894, in Loschwitz, Germany, to Heinrich and Gertrud Gehlert Wollheim. He had two brothers: Hasso, born October 1, 1893, and Gunther, born January 8, 1896. Gert’s father Heinrich was born in 1855 to Berthold and Rosalia Werther Wollheim. Heinrich was Jewish but converted to Protestantism in 1887. Gert’s mother Gertrud was born in 1867 to Arthur and Anna Schollkopf Gehlert. The Wollheim family was wealthy. Gert’s father Heinrich was a successful machine manufacturer. Gert’s older brother Hasso was a surgeon. From 1911 to 1913, Gert studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar. He was drafted as a grenadier in the German Army in World War I (1914-1918) and was wounded twice. In 1919, Gert moved to Berlin, then to Remels with his friend and fellow artist, Otto Pankok. In 1920, Gert moved to Dusseldorf, where he worked with other artists, including Pankok, Max Ernst, Otto Dix, and Karl Schwesig. Gert wrote and designed for theater, and also painted, drew, and sculpted. He joined the Junge Rhineland and Mutter Ey art groups and was active in the Aktivistenbund (Activist League), a radical group of liberal intellectuals and artists. In 1921, Gert married Leni Stein. In 1925, Gert and Leni moved to Berlin. Gert met and fell in love with Tatjana Barbakoff (1899-1944), a dancer who posed for his paintings. In 1927, Gert’s father Heinrich died. In January 1933, Hitler came to power and, by summer, Germany was ruled by a Nazi dictatorship. Gert's friend Karl Schwesig was arrested by the Nazi regime. Gert left Leni and fled to Paris. He was reunited with Tatjana and the couple lived together. Gert was active in the Kollektive Deutscher Kunstler (Collective German Artists), which was formed in 1935. In 1937, the Nazis held the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit in Munich, Germany, featuring three of Gert’s paintings. The Nazis saw modern art as a threat to Aryan culture and displayed confiscated modern art along with critic…
history: The drawing was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988.
identifier: irn403
is or was included in: us-005578-irn61186
record resource extent: overall: Height: 9.375 inches (23.813 cm) | Width: 12.375 inches (31.433 cm)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: Man in peasant dress giving bread to a woman with 2 small children through a barbed wire fence drawn by Gert Wollheim while a prisoner in Gurs internment camp in late 1940. The French established Gurs, the largest internment camp in France, in April 1939 to hold political refugees. In early 1940, about 4000 German Jewish refugees were interned as enemy aliens. Wolheim, who fled Nazi Germany for Paris in 1933, was arrested by the French in spring 1940 as an enemy alien. France surrendered to Germany in June 1940. Northern France was controlled by the Germans and southern France, where Gurs was located, by a collaborationist French government set up in Vichy. Wollheim's work was shown in the Nazi Degenerate Art exhibit and he was active in leftist, radical politics. In November 1941, he was sent to Gurs. Camp conditions were primitive; it was overcrowded and water, food, and clothing were scarce. Wollheim was transferred to Septfonds on January 1, 1941. He escaped and went into hiding until the region was liberated in August 1944. He left for New York in 1947.
title: At The Barbed Wire Drawing of a couple sharing bread through barbed wire in Gurs drawn by a German inmate