Thread: Felix Nussbaum (1904-44) was a German Jewish art. He has left us a profound record of man’s inhumanity to man. He charted the inner life of an artist facing a world gone mad. His work is amongst the most important of the 20th C as a witness to evil. 
Nussbaum was born into a patriotic Jewish family in Osnabrück, his father having fought for Germany in WWI. His dad encouraged him to paint. He studied in Hamburg & Berlin. Nussbaum (1930s)
He studied Van Gogh, Rousseau & de Chirico & won a scholarship to Rome’s Berlin Academy of Arts. There, in 1933 a Nazi propaganda minister explained all artists must glorify the ‘Aryan Race’. My Father & Mother (1926), Fairground (1925) & Remembering Grüßau (1925)
In 1926 he had his first one man exhibit in Berlin. Man with Top Hat (1926), Am Sandpfad in Emden (1926), Self-Portrait with Green Hat (1927) & Masquerade (1927). His was an intense & personal vision.
Throughout his life he completed many self-portraits which give an indication of his interior emotions. Self-Portrait with Mask (1928), Country Postman (1928), Memory of Norderney (1929) & A Night Scene from Arles (1929)
Already by the early 30s there is a note of menace & fear in his images. Gallows (1930), Dance at the Wall (1930), Bildnisgruppe (1930) & The Painter in his Studio (1931)
In the Great Place he shows artists arriving with their canvases for a Berlin gallery as a funeral march is played behind them. Der Tolle Platz (1931), Couple (the artist & his wife), 1932. The latter is a homage to Van Gogh & to love.
He brought his fiancé to meet his parents in Switzerland in 1934, where they had moved. They were homesick & against his objections they returned to Germany. Interior with Still Life (1935), Self-Portrait in Artists Clothes (1935), Felka Painting (1935) & Mastenwald (1935)
There is a playfulness & release in his early pictures from Brussels, where he plays with & mocks his own image. View of Ostende (1935), Self-Portrait with Apple (1936), Self-Portrait with Tea Towel (1935) & Self-Portrait In Archway (1936)
At the end of the decade his work takes on a darker edge, the persecution of the Jews in Germany was widely known in Belgium. Self-Portrait (1938), Fish Market (1936), Self-Portrait with Brother (1937) & Self-Portrait in the Studio (1938)
His painting, the Pearls, is ominous in showing a grieving woman, melancholy child & graveyard. The Pearls (Mourners) 1938, Don Quixote & the Windmills (1938), the Great Disaster (c1939) & Self-Portrait with Surrealist Background (1939)
Nussbaum & his wife Felka left for Belgium (c1934) & remained there for 10 years. The Refugee, Brussels (1939), Unidentified Man (1941), Still-Life with Mask, Glove & Football (1940) & Prisoner (1940). His refugee sits with nowhere to turn as a globe stands by, indifferent.
One of his most tragic works is Fear. He clutches his niece, the future, with terror. Yet even in the darkness stars & a lantern offer hope. Self-Portrait with Key (1941), Fear (Self-Portrait with his Niece, Marianne) 1941, Camp Synagogue (1941), Self Portrait with Felka (1942)
His painting, The Storm, symbolises the horrific events engulfing the Jewish people. Young Couple (1941) & The Storm (The Exiles) 1941.
Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940. He was arrested as a ‘hostile alien’ & was taken to the Saint-Cyprien Camp, France & signed a request to be transferred to Germany. Self-Portrait in Camp (1943), Self-Portrait with Jewish Passport (1943), Prisoners (1943) & The Organ Grinder (1943)
Nussbaum escaped on the train ride to Germany & joined Felka in Brussels. They went into hiding & lived with constant fear of being found, tortured & murdered. Puppets (1943), Self-Portrait (1943) & Jew at the Window (1943)
In 1944 Felix Nussbaum’s parents were murdered in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Five months later Felix & Felka were discovered. They were taken to the Mechelen Transit Camp. The Damned (1944), Threesome (1944), Jaqui in the Street (1944) & Stolpersteine for his parents
Death Triumphant (1944).
On the 2nd of August 1944 the couple were taken to Auschwitz. One week later Felix was murdered there.
Felix’s brother, sister-in-law & niece were murdered in Auschwitz too. Felka was murdered the day she arrived there with Felix. All we have left of Nussbaum & his family is his deeply powerful art. He painted the authentic experience & emotion of a man in extremis.
You can read more here: yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibiti…
The Felix Nussbaum Haus is dedicated to the artist: museumsquartier-osnabrueck.de/en/
Despite the millions of Jews, Roma/Sinti/Mincéirí & LGBTQI murdered in the Holocaust we appear to have learnt nothing. Jews are being murdered by ethno-nationalists, governments attack Mincéirí & the Catholic Church describes LGBTQI as ‘intrinsically disordered’
