Walter Lindgens
Im Café, o. J.

Alfred Flechtheim and Walter Lindgens

The artist Walter Lindgens, who came from an affluent family from the Rhineland, studied at the Academy in Munich under Karl Caspar, Josef Erberz and Adolf Schinnerer, whose religiously tinged Expressionist style influenced him early on. After a two year stay in Rome Lindgrens continued his studies in 1924, this time in Paris, but still maintained studios in Munich and Berlin at the same time. Artists such as Hans Purrmann and Rudolf Levy had a lasting impression on him, but Matisse and Dufy were also important for his work for a certain time. It was however Cézanne’s influence that was of predominant importance. In his early work the artist frequently chose the subject of the metropolis. Otherwise his work covers a wide range of themes, including landscapes and architectural subjects as well as abstraction. Many of his works – especially his early paintings – were destroyed in the war or have been lost. On top of this, his art was confiscated as being ‘degenerate’ and removed from museums.

In 1923 Alfred Flechtheim exhibited works by Walter Lindgens for the first time in a solo exhibition at his gallery rooms in Frankfurt am Main and remained his most important dealer until 1933. A publication on Lindgens by the director of the Wallraf Richartz Museum, Otto H. Förster, from 1959, refers to a number of works that had been acquired through Alfred Flechtheim and also names an impressively large number of Flechtheim exhibitions. Most of these however did not have a catalogue, nor was one published for his solo exhibition in 1923 in Frankfurt.