Otto Feldmann
Herr am Telefon (Alfred Flechtheim), 1911

Alfred Flechtheim and Otto Feldmann

The graphic artist, painter and art dealer Otto Feldmann was known in the Rhineland region mostly due to his ‘Rheinischer Kunstsalon’ (art salon) that he opened in January 1912 on the in Hansaring in Cologne. One year later he opened another branch, the ‘Neue Galerie’ in Berlin. Documentary evidence of Feldmann’s work as an artist himself can only be found from 1905 onwards. Satirical drawings, watercolours, etchings and designs for commercial art appeared in 1905/06 based on the Jugendstil style. In 1908 he participated in the eighth annual exhibition of the ‘Vereinigung Kölner Künstler’ in the Museum of Applied Art in Cologne with various works on paper, including graphic works. He spent 1910/11 in Paris from where he sent several drawings for the winter exhibition at the Berlin Secession, too. The style of his drawings shows the clear influence of Jules Pascin, a well-known French artist at that time, whose works Feldmann repeatedly exhibited in his galleries.

Otto Feldmann was not represented by the Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, founded in 1913. Feldmann’s tracks disappear again in 1914 and of his complete artistic œuvre only a few drawings remain. However, a full-length portrait of Alfred Flechtheim by Feldmann, executed in pencil in 1911, shows that Flechtheim and Feldmann knew each other. It would appear that Flechtheim established important links for Feldmann to the Parisian art market and it was probably thanks to Flechtheim that he made the acquaintance of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, whom Feldmann sent various works by modern French artists on several occasions in 1912 whose works he had exhibited in the ‘Rheinischer Kunstsalon’. As such, in 1912, Feldmann had already pre-empted what Alfed Flechtheim would exhibit in his own rooms in the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf one year later.