No Ordinary Winter's Tale: Resilience, the War 1943, German Expressionist Oil on Canvas

This is no ordinary winter scene. It is the story of prosecution and survival; of resolve and resilience during World War 2, as it was experienced by German Expressionist Heinz Lohmar (1900-1976).

The artist has studied at the Werkschule, an Academy of Applied Arts, in Cologne from 1916. In 1921, Lohmar joined the Dada art movement, and worked on murals in Cologne, Essen and Duisborg.

He became a member of the Association of Revolutionary

Painters and Sculptors of Germany in 1929, and of the Communist Party in 1931. A delegate at the world Congress against war in Amsterdam in 1932, Heinz Lohmar was arrested by the Nazis in 1933. His paintings were destroyed, and the artist escaped to Switzerland.

The Swiss however did not want him, nor did the Italians. He was expelled from both countries but finds refuge in Paris, where he shares a studio with his old friend Max Ernst.

In the French capital, he does the stage design for Bertolt Brecht’s Senora Carrar’s Rifes, created illustrations for antifascist journals and co-founds the Freier Kunstlerbund, an association whose honorary president is Oscar Kokoschka.

During the Phoney war, he joins the French army. Once demobilised, he escapes to the Free Zone in Southern France, while the Gestapo in Paris destroy – once again - the entire contents of his studio.

It is in this context that Heinz Lohmar, his wife and son reach the small hamlet of Allanche in November 1942.

Allanche is in the Cantal, a rugged, mountainous and sparsely populated region of Occitania. I am near certain that this is the place depicted in our painting, possibly during same winter. Our artwork is dated 1943. In Allanche, their safe haven, the Lohmars live in isolation, under the name Lemaire. Our painting was discovered in France: it may have been gifted by Lohmar to a local friend to whom he revealed his real identity.

After the war, Lohmar returned to Germany, and just a few years later, in 1947, his paintings were exhibited alongside those of fellow expressionists George Grosz, Hans Pechstein, Emile Nolde, Otto Schlemmer and Schmitt-Rotloff in the Musecm of the city of Mainz.

In October 1949 he was appointed to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts with a teaching position for painting, where he was appointed professor in 1951. His best-known student from his time in Dresden is the painter Gerhard Richter.

Our painting is signed at the upper right and measures 36 x 45 cm for the painting alone. The overall framed size is 50 x 58 cm.

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