When she received the title “Professor” in 1958 and became honorary member of the Staatliche Akadmie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart in 1962 she was 80, respective 84 years old. Her works, both paintings and weaving, were of intense colourfulness, one could easily guess that they were works of younger persons.
Ida KERKOVIUS (1879-1970) (Ger.; but I recommend this site with images of her, her work and literature) was born – as fourth child of twelve – into the family of a land owner in Latvia (Ger., Eng.), she grew up on the family estate (since 1878) “Saadsen” near Riga (Ger., Eng.). After regular school she acquired a certification as teacher for drawing and painting. She traveled in Italy in 1902, and then stayed in Dachau near Munich in the artist colony of Adolf HÖLZEL (1853-1934) (Ger., Eng.), who is one of those people, who gained more importance by their teaching and encouraging students, than by the own artistic production – see the list of his students.
Her first visit to HÖLZEL was short, she had to return to Latvia and stayed with her parents until 1907. She went for a short time to Berlin to study there, but it did nothing for her. So she followed HÖLZEL, who since 1906 was teaching composition (Kompositionsklasse) at the academy in Stuttgart. She entered his masterclass, became his assistant and from 1911 she taught private students, who were not yet accepted by the academy. She had her first solo-exhibition in the Sturm-Galerie (Ger., Eng.) of WALDEN (Ger., Eng.) 1912, and saw in 1912 the first exhibition with works of CEZANNE, van GOGH and others – the moderns. She was an independent and established artist since then.
She took part in an 1916 exhibition “Hölzel und sein Kreis”, together with BAUMEISTER (Ger., Eng.), SCHLEMMER (Ger., Eng.) and ITTEN (Ger., Eng.). In the years 1920 to 1923 she spent the winter semesters in Weimar at the Bauhaus (Ger., Eng.) as student. She met KANDINSKY (Ger., Eng.), KLEE (Ger., Eng.) and of course ITTEN again and learned the fine art of weaving in the classes of Gunta STÖLZEL (Ger., Eng.). The correct German term btw is Bildwirker. KERKOVIUS always returned to her Stuttgart atelier and had her first great single exhibition in the Württemberger Kunstverein in 1930.
Of course her work was labeled Entartete Kunst after 1933. She traveled a lot through Europe and started to paint landscapes. 1939 her family lost the estate near Riga and a part of her works perished. Through the war she lived quietly and secluded, earning her living with teaching and the weaving of tapestry. In March 1944 her atelier is completely destroyed. Most of her early oeuvre is burned. She stays with friends, and paints. Since 1950, she’s 70 then, the honours arrive in dribs and drabs, she starts traveling again – Bretagne, Ischia, Lago di Garda.
She never was afraid of colour. Learning from HOELZEL and then meeting KLEE, KANDINSKY, ITTEN and SCHLEMMER was crucial for her development. She painted on anything available, from postcards to wallpaper. She was always ready to learn something new, receptive. Like her teacher HOELZEL, she had a large number of students. Her credo as artist was, that the finished work is not the most important thing, but the way to reach it; that means to study and learn rhythm and concentration.
I found no details of her personal live on the web. An interesting woman.
Category Archives: interesting women
Interesting Women: Misia Sert
Maria Sophie GODEBSKA, known to the world as Misia SERT (1872-1950) (Ger., Eng.) was born in St.Petersburg. Her mother died while giving birth, so her father Cyprian GODEBSKI (Eng.), a Polish sculptor working at the restoration of the Tsarist palace Tsarskoye Selo (Ger., Eng.), sent her to her grandmother and hereby Misia grew up near Brussels. The household of her grandfather Adrien-François SERVAIS (Ger., Eng.), a noted Belgian cellist, was something of a salon: Many artists dropped by; friendships and connections were maintained. MISIA early showed musical talent and she became a gifted pianist. She played piano sitting on the knees of the old Franz LISZT (1811-1886) (Ger., Eng.); Gabriel FAURÈ (1845-1924) (Ger., Eng.) was pleased to teach her and fell into despair when the fifteen year old decided to escape into a marriage. Together with her father and his new wife she had come to Paris and was educated for some years in the monastery of Sacre-Coeur, from where she fled to London at the age of fourteen. She returned to Paris in the following year, only to tie the knot with Tadeusz NATANSON (1868-1951) (Fr.): This is the “romantic” version. In fact she was 21 when she married for the first time, and it’s a bit difficult with saied monastery.
The pair had an open house and naturally nearly all artists of fin de siècle (Ger., Eng.) Paris sooner or later dropped by: The inevitable TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (Ger., Eng.), RENOIR (Ger., Eng.), the old MALLARMÉ (Ger., Eng.) sent confect and verses, VERLAINE (Ger., Eng.) dedicated a sonnet to her, MAILLOL (Ger., Eng.) wanted her as model (blabbing something about flesh’s deathlessness), and PROUST (Ger., Eng.) forgave (!) her, that she had called him a snob. She later was the female witness at PICASSO’s (Ger., Eng.) first wedding and godmother of his first child. She was a friend of (the great) Coco CHANEL (Ger., Eng.).
1905 she divorced NATANSON and married, for whatever reasons, the pretty rich Alfred Charles EDWARDS (1856-1914) (Fr.), an important figure in the media scene of the time. She seemingly became friendly with him 1903, when she started her salon for reals. They stayed married until EDWARD’s death caused by a severe Grippe (seemingly an influenza (Ger., Eng.)) in March 1914.
The man of her life indeed was Joseph Maria SERT i BADIA (1876-1945) (Ger., Eng.), the Spanish painter of his generation. From 1908 onwards she was his mistress, they married 1920. SERT left her 1928 for Isabelle Roussadana MDIVANI (1906-1938) (Ger., Eng.). The MDIVANI’s were known for their lucrative marriages and somehow Roussie was able to get Misia’s consent on this marriage. Roussie’s life was short and tragic: After the death of her favourite brother Alexis in a car accident in 1935 (after his divorce from Barbara HUTTON (Ger., Eng.)) she seemingly overdosed on something.
After SERT’s death 1945 Misia left the public stage. Her memoirs were published posthumously.
Misia SERT was at the center of the cultural scene of Paris from the late 1890s well into the 1930s; she had a salon in one form or another since 1903 up to the late thirties and met more or less anybody who played a role in the European scene from the fin de siecle onwards until the the start of WWII. The scene of her life was by a kind of somnambulistic surety, or self-assurance, always connected with some of the most important figures of the European cultural developments of the late 19th and early 20th century. COCTEAU (Ger., Eng.) once called her a sorcière.
An interesting woman.
Interesting Women: Inge Morath
Yesterday evening I had a mind to look in a picture book and grabbed a copy of the 1986 Aperture edition of “Portraits. Photographed by Inge Morath”.
Inge MORATH (1923-2002) (Ger., Eng.) worked as MAGNUM-photographer, first after CAPA (Ger., Eng.) had invited her and Ernst HAAS (Ger., Eng.) 1949 as editor. She worked with the pictures CARTIER-BRESSON (Ger., Eng.) sent in:
“I think that in studying his way of photographing I learned how to photograph myself, before I ever took a camera into my hand.”
The classical way, learn from the masters by studying their work and skill. She first took the assignments the “big boys” of the agency did not want to do – most of them were interested in war photography, CAPA especially, and MORATH refused to photograph war. One result of such an early assignment about the residents of Soho and Mayfair is the picture of Mrs. Eveleigh NASH from 1953.
[via]
In the aforementioned book from 1986 MORATH tells about her meeting with Mrs. NASH:
“I had noticed Mrs. Nash a few times walking near Curzon Square in London. She was rather short, enveloped in a large ankle-length mink coat, and she wore a hat that no doubt had been created especially for her. I managed to meet her and, naturally, told her that I would very much like to photograph her. She obliquely said that she quite regularly drove out to get a breath of fresh air and that she often stopped somewhere in Buckingham Palace Mall at about three in the afternoon. I went a few times to look for her, but there was no trace of her; I decided to go just once more before I gave up. It was a slightly foggy day and there she was, in a big open car with her hat and her fur coat and a lap robe, the chauffeur standing watch. I ran toward her, silently praying that she would not move, but she had seen and acknowledged me and sat there with graceful patience as I waited for two passersby in the background to arrive at the right spot. She thought a couple of shots were quite enough and made me get into the car and join her for the rest of the afternoons outing.
When I showed her the picture she liked it and invited me to tea in her apartment on Charles Street. The apartment was big and dark. In the hall stood a number of pots with avocado trees grown from the pits of that fruit which she had planted herself and for which she obviously had a passion. She told me that her husband had died, that she now introduced debutantes at court, and that she had written an English-German dictionary through First World War for the use of British soldiers who might get lost in Germany. * Indoors she wore a big hat, too, and black net gloves. She was willing to pose with a picture of herself as a ravishing debutante in one hand and a portrait of herself as a young woman behind her.
Once I had lunch with Mrs. Nash at the Ritz and she leaned over to ask, “Why do these people stare at me so? Do you think I put on too much rouge?”
I grew very fond of Mrs. Nash and was saddened to read in a paper a few years later that she had died sitting in bed and looking at some of her jewelry.”
* This book was published in a new edition 1940.
I am sure that Mrs. Nash’s rouge was perfect.
In some online publications Mrs. Nash is called “a publisher” – obviously she is mistaken for this man. Inge MORATH did wonderful portraits, she was always interested in humans and met them with respect. I admire her for her ability to transport this respect and friendliness into the picture.
P.S. Her heritage is managed by the Inge Morath Foundation.
III B
I wrote about Elsbeth SCHRAGMÜLLER (1887-1940), das Fräulein Doktor, here and there. In a totally different connection I came across Oberst NICOLAI (1873-1947) (Ger., Eng.) again, her chief through the Great War and the head of section III B. He is mentioned in a Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich*, because he was a member of the board of the Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des Neuen Deutschland (Ger.), a pretty unsavoury institution.
III B was the military intelligence service of the Prussian and later the German army. It was founded 1889 as a section in the Generalstab and later became an own departement (Abteilung), steadily growing. NICOLAI was the head of this organization from 1913 until the end 1918. III B always was in competition with the Navy (Marinenachrichtendienst, Ger., Nachrichtenabteilung des Admiralstabs, founded 1889) and the different sections of the Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, Ger., Eng.).
As a kind of forerunner of NICOLAI Wilhelm STIEBER (1818-1882) (Ger., Eng.) can be seen. But STIEBER is basically a police man of the Criminal Division, who in the times of the 1848 revolution also did domestic intelligence avant la lettre, working seemingly with the Preußische Geheimpolizei (Ger., Eng.) too. Later (in the 1860s) he became head of the Feldgendarmerie (Ger., Eng.) and so was responsible for the counterespionage corps. STIEBER played a role in the running of the Central-Nachrichten-Büreau, the very first structured German intelligence organization. I read somewhere that it was part of the Foreign Office**, but am not sure, I have not yet looked for a history of this organization. After all in those years around 1871 the institutions are still in a liquid state of forming.
When NICOLAI took over 1913 he found a working organization, but with large room for improvement. Generally it was not overly successful throughout the war, with SCHRAGMÜLLER’s work as notable exception. NICOLAI’s last second in command was Major Friedrich GEMPP (1873-1947) (Ger.), the first head of the Abwehr (Ger., Eng.), who also died in Moscow, one week before his old chief.
* KLEE, Ernst: Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945, Frankfurt a.M. 2007, 433.
** The Foreign Office established an independent historical commission some years ago, the final report will be available in the coming days: Das Amt und die Vergangenheit. Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik. Here’s an interview with Prof. ZIMMERMANN.
