The verbal acrobat as a painter
In the early 1930s Joachim Ringelnatz (1883–1934) was listed in the Berlin directory as a ‘painter’; today he is known and loved as a witty verbal acrobat and subversive cabaret artist. While his yarns about the sailor Kuttel Daddeldu or the bitingly satirical Turngedichte (Gymnastic Poems) now have cult status, his visual works have faded from the collective consciousness – so it’s time to refresh our memory of the painter Ringelnatz!
Ready for rediscovery are empathetically quirky images of humans and animals: creatures caught between small pitfalls and looming storms; down to earth, but with grand dreams. Ringelnatz combines stylistic elements from new objectivity and magical realism with a pinch of romanticism into a highly individual mix. In his paintings the loud declaimer reveals himself as a quiet melancholic.
During his lifetime Ringelnatz’s paintings were appreciated by gallerists, critics, the general public and artist colleagues – among them Otto Dix and George Grosz, as well as Karl Hofer and Renée Sintenis. We now present around forty works in collaboration with the Joachim-Ringelnatz-Museum Cuxhaven and the Buchheim Museum Bernried. The extensive Cuxhaven inventory is supplemented by important loans from private and public collections.
CATALOGUE
Edited by Erika Fischer for the Joachim-Ringelnatz-Stiftung and
Joachim-Ringelnatz-Museum, Cuxhaven, Stephan Dahme for the Buchheim Museum der Phantasie, Bernried am Starnberger See, and Karsten Müller for the Ernst Barlach Haus Hamburg
With poems by Joachim Ringelnatz and texts by Stephan Dahme, Dagmar Lott, Ulrich Luckhardt and Florian Rogge
120 pages, 70 illustrations, in German, hardcover, museum edition €20
ISBN 978-3-7774-4834-3
