Rare and overlooked: four 20th-century works not to be missed

Stella Snead (1910-2006), Ritual, 1992

‘Stella Snead never set out to be part of the official Surrealist group,’ says Katarina Stojanović, a specialist in Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s in London. ‘She didn’t want to join them because of the way the men looked down on their female counterparts.’

Snead was first introduced to the movement towards the end of the 1930s, initially in London, then later in New York — where many Surrealists had fled to escape war in Europe — by her friend from art school, Leonora Carrington.

Turning her back on the collective, Snead moved to New Mexico, where she began to make paintings that were her own take on Surrealism, inspired by Native American myths and rituals.

In the early 1950s Snead abandoned painting in favour of photography, spending the following two decades documenting her travels around the Middle East and Asia — in particular India.

‘Travel was a form of liberation for Snead,’ Stojanović explains. ‘It meant an escape from the confines of the home, not just for her but for women generally — an idea that had infiltrated her paintings.’

In 1987, Snead decided to return to the easel in a bid to reimagine her earlier paintings, the majority of which were now missing. Ritual (above), which was painted in 1992, is a recreation of a work originally conceived in the late 1940s.

Ritual  was included in Snead’s 1999 show Rediscovery  at CFM Gallery, New York, which marked only the second time any of her paintings had been exhibited to the public in half a century. ‘I failed to get even a toe in the door of the New York art world or among the Surrealists. In 1998, I had turned 88 and time was running out to be rediscovered as a painter,’ Snead recalled. ‘Quite suddenly the doors were flung open, and there was Neil Zukerman [owner of CFM Gallery] wanting to do just that!... What lovely luck!’

Six years later — and a year before her death — Snead’s acclaim went institutional when one of her paintings was hung alongside works by Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Arshile Gorky and Joseph Cornell in the major retrospective Surrealism USA  at New York’s National Academy Museum.

Max Beckmann (1884-1950), Adam und Eva, conceived 1936

The horrors of the First World War caused the German artist Max Beckmann to have a nervous breakdown, which transformed his work from history paintings inspired by Old Masters to a new style of Expressionist art filled with narrative depictions of a dystopian post-war Berlin.

He was relatively successful until 1933, when Hitler was appointed German chancellor. Beckmann was dismissed from his teaching post at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt, and his works were removed from view in Berlin’s National Gallery.

Around the same time, Beckmann began to experiment with sculpture, creating just a handful of works in clay and plaster over the course of three years.

Eight years after his death in 1950, Beckmann’s widow, Mathilde (known as Quappi), and Catherine Viviano, who represented his estate, authorised bronzes to be cast from his only surviving terracotta sculpture: Adam und Eva. They were encouraged to do so by the young American collector Stanley Seeger.

‘This cast, the first of an edition of five, was acquired by Seeger,’ explains Stojanović. ‘It depicts a seated man with a snake coiling around him, and in his lap he clutches an infantile Eve. Adam has a palpable sense of hopelessness and suffering that reflects Beckmann’s fears about the rise of Nazism.’

Seeger became one of the most celebrated champions of modern art, owning more than 80 Picassos. ‘Seeger provenance is highly prized,’ says the specialist. ‘When you combine that with the rarity of a Beckmann sculpture, the sale of this work is quite a special moment.’

Hannah Höch (1889-1978), Der schöne Po, 1958

Hannah Höch was a pioneer of photomontage art in Germany during the Weimar Republic. She was introduced to Dada by the artist Raoul Hausmann, and not long after accepted into the Berlin Dada group. Other members included Max Ernst, George Grosz and Kurt Schwitters. Höch, however, was the only female artist among the provocative ensemble.

In 1920, she was invited to exhibit her montages — lampooning popular culture, politics and the role of women — at the First International Dada Fair. Yet despite the critical acclaim she received, her male peers were patronising. ‘They continued for a long while to look upon [women] as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status,’ Höch later recalled.

A few years later, the group disbanded. Höch moved to The Hague, where she caused scandal by having a love affair with a woman. Then, in 1934, she was declared a ‘Cultural Bolshevist’ by the Nazi party and banned from exhibiting. She returned to Germany but spent the war living and working incognito outside Berlin.

‘What’s fascinating about Höch is that she stayed true to her discipline and worked in photomontage for the rest of her life,’ says Stojanović. ‘Der schöne Po, which was made in 1958, collages a female’s naked behind with ducks and waves. Its title is a play on words, referring simultaneously to the River Po, which flows through a fertile valley in northern Italy, and the German slang for “butt”. It’s typical of her tongue-in-cheek style.’

Höch’s reputation began to return to pre-war levels just before her death in 1978: between 1971 and 1976 she had retrospectives at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris.

Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944), Netzflicker, 1928

‘This picture was painted by the German artist Felix Nussbaum in 1928 — a time when Germany was at a crossroads between modernity and tradition,’ explains Stojanović. ‘It was an era of rapid industrialisation, which also saw a growing conservative backlash against the frivolity and avant-garde culture of the Weimar Republic. This painting is an interesting reflection of these tensions. The netmaker is a classical art motif, but Nussbaum uses it in a totally radical, modern style, as though trying to reconcile these two identities.’

Whether or not he realised it, Nussbaum was also discussing national identity with foresight — being German and Jewish would soon have deadly consequences.

In 1932, Nussbaum won a scholarship at the German Academy in Rome. The following year, however, Hitler assumed power and sent his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, to the Italian capital. In Rome, Goebbels declared that art should promote Nazi ideology, and Nussbaum had his scholarship revoked. The artist never returned to Germany, instead settling in Brussels, where he painted depictions of people suffering from fear and persecution.

In 1940, he was arrested and sent to a camp in the south of France, but he managed to escape and returned to Brussels. He worked for several years in hiding in an attic, until, following a tip-off, he was re-arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz, where he was murdered soon after arrival.

Following Nussbaum’s death, the majority of his works went missing. Four decades later, they were reassembled by a German art critic, Wendelin Zimmer, and following a re-examination of his importance New York’s Jewish Museum staged the exhibition Art in Exile: Felix Nussbaum 1904-1944  in 1985. This was followed in 1993 by the documentary Art and Remembrance: The Legacy of Felix Nussbaum, and in 1998 Felix Nussbaum Haus, a museum dedicated to his work, opened in his home town of Osnabrück.