Otto Gleichmann

Otto Gleichmann grew up in Mainz, Strasbourg, Erfurt and Bielefeld. He studied painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, the Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeschule Breslau and the Kunstschule Weimar from 1906–10. From 1914 he was a grammar school teacher in Erfurt and, from 1919, in Hanover. From 1917 onwards, an intensive contact developed with the writer Theodor Däubler. In 1918 Gleichmann joined the Hanover Secession.

The Galerie Alfred Flechtheim organised a solo exhibition of his work in 1919 in Düsseldorf and published the portfolio ‘Chimären’ in 1921. Gleichmann kept up contact with Hans Arp, Max Burchartz, Walter Dexel, Alexei Jawlensky, El Lissitzky, Amédée Ozenfant, Kurt Schwitters and Tristan Tzara. In 1922 his work was shown at an exhibition of the artists’ association de Branding in Rotterdam and the Kestner Society in Hanover acknowledged his work with an exhibition in 1932.

In 1936 he was prohibited from painting and exhibiting by the National Socialists. His work was defamed at the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition in 1937, after which twenty-seven works of art by Gleichmann were confiscated from museums in Germany. Many of his paintings were destroyed in an air raid.