THE PROPERTY OF KITTY FISCHER-VAN DER MIJL DEKKER Kitty van der Mijll Dekker was born in Djokdjkarta (Java) in 1908. She moved to Holland in 1916 and settled in The Hague were she went to high-school. In 1925/26 she studied fine art and art history at Hornsey School of Art in London. In 1929 she studied interior decoration at the Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts in The Hague after which she took private lessons with the interior decorator Cor Alons. When her parents moved to Nunspeet in the same year, Kitty, on the advise of her cousin the architect J.W.E. Buys, went to study at the Bauhaus at Dessau. After the preliminary course which she took from Josef Albers, she chose for the architectural course 'Bau/Ausbau'. However, she was not admitted as it had appeared from here work the preliminary course she had rather a decorative bent than a constructional one. Thus Albers advised her to follow the weaving-course with Guta Stölz, which she did. Kitty completed her stay at the Bauhaus with the Bauhaus certificate on 12 April 1932. She immediately returned to Nunspeet were she started her own weaving-workshop "De Wipstrik". A few months later, her co-students, the couple Hermann and Greten Fischer-Kähler, joined her. After Hermann's divorce from Greten in 1934, Kitty started a new workshop named "Handweverij en ontwerp atelier K. van der Mijll Dekker". Orders from that time until the closure of the workshop in the 1960s, included occassional table-linnen for the Dutch Royal family (see lot 394 in this sale) and textiles for the interiors of various Public Buildings. Kitty and Hermann got married in 1950. Hermann Fischer (1898 Hamburg - 1974 Harderwijk) was a student at the Bauhaus at Dessau from 1928 to 1932. He took, among other things, the architectural course 'Bau/Ausbau' under guidance of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In 1931 he married Greten Kähler, a student at the weaving-workshop. After his divorce he made various wallpaper designs for the firms Rath & Doodeheefer and Goudsmit-Hoff but was mainly occupied executing Kitty's designs. Marguerite Friedländer (Lyon 1896 - Guernville Cal. 1896) and Franz Rudolf Wildenhain (Leipzig 1905 - Pittsford NY 1980) met during their stay at the 'Kunstgewerbeschule Burg Giebichenstein' in Halle a.d. Saale around 1924. Friedländer studied at the Staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar from 1919-1925 and, at the same time, worked at the Bauhaus ceramic workshop in Dornburg. Wildenhain started at the Staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar in 1924 and worked in Dornburg as well until 1925, when he continued his study at 'Burg Giebichenstein'. In 1930 Friedländer and Wildenhain got married and were unfortunately fired by the National-Socialists where upon they decided to move to Holland. Friedländer left first and before she arrived she spent some time in Versoix near Geneva. When Wildenhain arrived later that year they settled in Putten in the province of Gelderland where they started the ceramic workshop ''t Kruikje'. In 1940 Friedländer emmigrated to the United States and finally settled with the artist's colony "Pond Farms" in Guerneville, Cal. where Wildenhain joined her in 1947. The friendship between the Fischer's and the Wildenhain's dates from 1937 and, according to a letter Kitty wrote to Mrs. Barbara Cowless in 1980, their first meeting went as follows: "The first time, by chance, Frans passed Hermann on somewhere a road, and not knowing him, he said to himself: "if that isnot a man from BAUHAUS-I'm a Dutchman!". At that time, Hermann used to wear a large-brimmed hat, rather flat on top, as some of the BAUHAUS-masters favoured too. ......It was evident, that we should become friends with the Wildenhains, - being all former Bauhaus-students, and Hermann- like Frans and Marguérite, had the German nationality too; -while on nazi's etc., we had the same opinion". After that first meeting, whenever Kitty and Hermann visited the Wildenhains in Putten, they took back pottery and paintings which they loved at first sight.

'burg giebichenstein'

BY FRANZ RUDOLF WILDENHAIN, 1933-1949

Details

'burg giebichenstein'
By Franz Rudolf Wildenhain, 1933-1949
Depicting a hilly landscape with houses, a road with a car and two figures, oil on cardboard (framed)
42 x 54.5cm.
Signed lower left F.R. Wildenhain

Lot Essay

According to a note written by Kitty Fischer on the back of an old photograph of this painting, the painting depicts Burg Giebichenstein near Weimar (i.e. Halle a.d. Saale) and was painted from memory on commission. However, it is unclear who gave the commission. Kitty and Herman Fischer purchased the painting from Wildenhain before 1940

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