Rudolf Grossmann
Bildnis Max Pretzfelder, 1922

Alfred Flechtheim and Rudolf Grossmann

The painter and graphic artist Rudolf Grossmann spent eight formative years in Paris where he was part of the Café du Dôme circle of German artists. Jules Pascin became his teacher and close confidant. From 1922–23 he travelled around Italy with the painter Hans Purrmann. In 1928 Grossmann was appointed professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin, became a member of the Berlin Secession and the Deutscher Künstlerbund. His works were defamed at the Nazi’s ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition and 391 of his works removed from German museums. Grossmann died in 1941 following a serious illness.

Works by Rudolf Grossmann were already included in Alfred Flechtheim’s opening exhibition in October 1913 in Düsseldorf. In 1914 Flechtheim exhibited the Dôme artists in his Düsseldorf gallery and devoted a solo exhibition to Grossmann in Berlin in 1929. However, Grossmann was actually represented by Paul Cassirer in Berlin, who printed the first seven drawings by him in the magazine ‘Kunst und Künstler’ between 1911 and 1914. In 1912 he published a portfolio of ten lithographs entitled ‘Um Berlin’.

Grossmann documented life in Berlin in 1933 in his portraits and street scenes like no other artist. He also worked as an illustrator, creating drawings for Dostoyevsky’s 'A Nasty Story', Chekhov’s 'The Cherry Orchard' and Goethe’s 'Diary from 1918'. In 1922 he designed Franz Blei’s 'The Biggest Bestiarium' in 'Modern Literature' together with Olaf Gulbransson and Thomas Theodor Heine. Grossmann wrote a number of mostly illustrated essays for the magazine ‘Querschnitt’ published by Flechtheim and Hermann von Wedderkop, as well as for the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt and an autobiography entitled 'Manege des Lebens'.