Eric Isenburger (born Erich Jacob Isenburger (), May 17, 1902, Frankfurt; died March 26, 1994, New York) was a German–Jewish artist who lived in France from 1933 and in New York from 1941. (Alternative link.) Excerpted from Aspekte des malerischen Werkes Eric Isenburgers [Aspects of Eric Isenburger's painterly œuvre], master's thesis, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 2011.
Life and career European period Erich Isenburger was born in Frankfurt am Main on May 17, 1902 as the son of Sally (Salomon) and Olga, née Neumond. Sally was described as an Ökonom working within Isenburger & Co. in Frankfurt, whose partners were Sally and two of his brothers; Olga, a housewife, was the daughter of a horse-trader, two of whose brothers ran a grain-trading firm, K. E. Neumond, that had offices in both Germany and the United States; in 1921 they founded a banking company, but the following year both died as the result of a car accident, whereupon their shares in the companies and various properties passed to Olga. Erich's slightly older brother Herbert was educated to join a Neumond company.
As a pupil of the Pestalozzi-influenced Musterschule Gymnasium für Jungen in Frankfurt from 1909 to 1921, Erich became a keen painter. Despite some reluctance from his parents, he enrolled at the Frankfurt Kunstgewerbeschule (school of applied arts). He also enrolled at Frankfurt University for courses in art history and archaeology. In 1923, while he was a student at the Kunstgewerbeschule, it merged with the Städelschule (art academy), Franz Karl Delavilla became a professor, and Isenburger ended his university studies. Delavilla's own artwork included commercial assignments, which required an ability in a variety of graphic applications as well as stage settings. Isenburger was a student in his graphic arts class, and decades later he described this education as "strict and traditional". He completed his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in 1925, after an extensive trip in 1924 to Italy: along the Italian riviera and to Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome.
Isenburger had intended to stay in Paris for its malerische ('painterly') material; but on learning that visa extensions would be difficult for Germans, instead went in 1925 to Barcelona, staying there until 1927. He stated in the 1980s that he had studied during this time at the Real Academia Catalana de Bellas Artes, but a later search in the school records provided no evidence for this. What is certain is that he had his own own studio (on Carrer d'Aulèstia i Pijoan, in the Gràcia quarter). A photograph of a wall within the studio shows twelve paintings: landscapes, nudes, portraits, and still-lifes.
Gregory Hahn and Karolina Hyży note that although one still-life among the twelve was at one time titled Zerfallendes Judentum ('Crumbling Jewish world'), it "shows no Jewish ritual objects"; and indeed "there are at this time no known works on Jewish themes recorded in the inventories [of Isenburger's works] or in other archival sources", aside from a single, much later, commissioned painting (The Prophet Moses): "Isenburger remained detached from historical, political, and religious themes". Rolf Jessewitsch broadly concurs, and points out that the title Zerfallendes Judentum was not applied by Isenburger himself but instead by the art collector .
In the paintings of this period can be seen "Isenburger's procedure of not entirely covering over deeper layers of paint, but instead deliberately integrating them in new pictorial compositions. At times all motifs will be clearly demarcated next to each other."
In the spring of 1925, Isenburger had happened to meet Jula Elenbogen – then 17 and speaking only Polish and perhaps also Yiddish – who had been sent by her parents in Augustów to stay with relatives in Frankfurt. After his return from Barcelona in spring 1927 the two continued to meet, going on walks together and eventually making journeys to Dresden, Berlin, and Augustów. His mother and family were opposed to marriage with Jula, who was not yet of marriageable age; her parents had met him before Jula had, but plans for a large wedding in Augustów were abandoned when her father suddenly died. They had a small wedding ceremony in Warsaw on December 1, 1927. Jula took classes in dance given by teachers as prominent as Gertrud Kraus, the dances were photographed by and others, and "a wealth of new relationships opened up in this way".
Still disapproving of the marriage, Erich's mother reduced his allowance. As the cost of living was lower in Vienna, (Alternative link.) in 1928, the couple moved there, renting a studio apartment, first on Spittelauer Platz, (Alternative link.) and later on Weihburggasse, above the restaurant Zum Weissen Rauchfangkehrer, then popular among artists (broadly defined). During this period, Isenburger painted numerous portraits of such people, but many have since been lost. While Jula embarked on her career in dance, he worked as a freelance commercial artist and stage designer for a Jewish theater group, Vilna Truppe ('Vilnius Troupe'), when it, directed by Alex Stein, made guest appearances in Vienna in 1930.
Isenburger was short of money, as the theater was not paying him. His departure from the position of stage designer was already decided in October 1930 when his mother killed herself in Frankfurt. This resulted in the expectation of a considerable inheritance for each of her sons, but it was the estate of Erich's father that financed a move to Berlin, then a center for the arts. The couple had the architect transform an apartment at Paulsbornerstraße 77 in Berlin-Halensee into "a sleek, modernist, all-birch studio and apartment"; Neufeld later said that "all of it was furnished by the leading shops and craftsmen of Berlin". The redecoration process would in 1931 have made it hard to use the apartment for its intended purposes, so the Isenburgers traveled to Italy. Their new home was habitable by spring 1932.
Jessewitsch describes Isenburger's techniques of the time:
[O]utlines are scratched into the painting surface ... [I]n 1931 Isenburger painted thin, glaze-like colour surfaces layered one above the other – first colours, then black on top – and then wiped away enough of the black to allow the colours below to shine forth.
He notes that Isenburger's techniques of the period had also been used by Max Ernst, , and Oscar Kokoschka.
The gallery owner Wolfgang Gurlitt noticed Isenburger's participation in at least one joint exhibition in 1932 and was greatly impressed, asking to see more of his work. In January 1933, Isenburger had seven or more works exhibited at the Gurlitt's Berlin gallery. Although it was not a solo exhibition, Isenburger's works eclipsed those by other artists, which were shown "in the gallery's lesser spaces". His own were enthusiastically reviewed by , and others. Osborn remarked on the way that paint was subjected to scratches down to the canvas; another review compared these works to frescoes; a little earlier, Curt Glaser had compared them to mezzotints. Loving the music of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, and fascinated by the jazz dances of Josephine Baker, Isenburger placed paintings of dark-skinned dancers at the center of the works he exhibited. The exhibition "rocketed Isenburger to short-lived stardom"; "[t]his was Isenburger's break-through to a stellar career – and at the same time its end".
Not only did Gurlitt stage this exhibition, he also arranged to make Isenburger a monthly payment that would enable himself to have first-purchase rights to his work, got Isenburger to look for emerging artists that he, Gurlitt, might also exhibit, and appointed him managing editor of the annual Das graphische Jahr.
Isenburger painted numerous portraits while living in Berlin. Although most have been lost, a portrait of Gurlitt survives; it:
is remarkable on account of Isenburger's application of thin, glaze-like paint surfaces one on top of the other, for which reason a face can be discerned in a deeper layer of paint under Gurlitt's hands. Motifs of this kind are clearly to be seen in other paintings later on as well. In this Isenburger developed an approach to painting that was uniquely his own.
But after the Reichstag fire and a defamatory review of Isenburger's "degenerate, Jewish art" by the painter and SA Sturmbannführer in the National Socialist German Students' League newspaper Der deutsche Student, Gurlitt advised the Isenburgers to leave Germany and go to Paris for the time being; (Alternative link.) English translation of Eric Isenburger 1902–1994. Ausgewählte Werke. Städtische Galerie im Rathausfletz, Neuburg an der Donau 2. Mai – 13. Juni 1999 [Schrobenhausen: Bickel 1999]. . Pp 17–18. as he was on good terms with the French consul in Berlin (who had come to see the exhibition), Gurlitt was able to procure the needed travel papers very quickly.
The couple fled by train to Paris on March 31, 1933. In early April, armed men raided the gallery and robbed it of all the works of Isenburger that they could find. With hindsight, Gurlitt blamed not only the most politically extreme Nazis but also artists with Nazi tendencies who resented Isenburger's success.
The Isenburgers were based in Paris for about four years. Erich participated in the eleventh Salon des Tuileries; writing for Le Temps, François Thiébault-Sisson criticized the use of color in one work, but praised the artist. Isenburger made a surreptitious one-day visit to Berlin on October 1, 1933, in order to retrieve some possessions (a plan abandoned as too dangerous), to establish a new address on Till-Wardenburg-Str (a genuine address, but one at which his residence was a fiction) in the hope that this would continue to allow money transfers, and to consult with Gurlitt.
One of Isenburger's paintings was exhibited in the 1933 Salon des Tuileries; and, thanks to the Comité français pour la Protection des Intellectuels juifs persécutés, two in the Salon d'Automne later the same year. The catalog for the latter gave the exhibitors' addresses; Isenburger's (46 Place Jules-Ferry) was the same as that of Gert Wollheim and Tatjana Barbakoff, and was living in number 44. Writing in Beaux-arts, the critics Raymond Cogniat and Philippe Diolé were dismissive about all the exhibitors other than Isenburger, whose work they praised. Writing in Prager Presse, Paul Westheim singled out Wollheim, , Lipman-Wulf, and Isenburger, "who knew how to create his own signature style, a very striking light-dark of the surface, [and] has been experiencing what one calls a success in the press".
In June 1934, Isenburger participated in the émigré exhibition – Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work: Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, sponsored by the Jewish Refugees Committee and curated by Carl Braunschweig (Charles Brunswick) – at Parsons Galleries in London. Isenburger exhibited three works; Franz Landsberger, wrote that these, and especially Lady Sitting, "have something phosphorescent about them, a mysterious effect that is augmented all the more by the incised lines". A short notice in The Manchester Guardian noted "the lively surrealistic eccentricities of Erich Isenburger and Yankel Adler". Helen Rosenau wrote of Isenburger's remarkable color palette.
In Paris, in summer 1933, the Isenburgers met and became friends with the Swedish dance and portrait photographer Anna Riwkin-Brick, who, with her brother , would arrange for an exhibition in Stockholm's . Running from late December 1934 into January, this was Isenburger's first ever solo show, most of whose exhibits came from Berlin. It brought mixed reviews, but Gregory Hahn and Karolina Hyży single out a perceptive and appreciative review by as "[standing] out from all the rest". Two years later, Isenburger's second exhibition there was of paintings made in France. Judisk Krönika published a particularly appreciative review.