Rolf Cavael was a brave man. In 1932, the artist dared to publicly contradict Joseph Goebbels at a meeting of the “Battle League for German Culture” when he agitated against “Jewish Cultural Bolshevism.” Expressing so much sympathy for modern art and snubbing a powerful National Socialist could quickly become life-threatening. Therefore, after seizing power, the artist (1898-1979), who would later become one of the most important representatives of non-representational painting in Germany, had no choice but to leave Berlin with his family and move to Werdenfelser Land. The later co-founder of the group ZEN 49 was to live here for 21 years, artistically mostly completely isolated, but without ever deviating a millimeter from his positions.
A special exhibition in the private Aschenbrenner Museum traces these lonely years. It is the first exhibition dedicated to the long-time fellow citizen of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and it certainly doesn’t come too soon. But it’s worth the visit because museum director Karin Teufl has managed to bring outstanding works into her small house that provide a good overview of the artist’s work. Not only oil paintings and works on paper allow an approach to the draftsman and painter, but also graphics, photos, documents and sometimes shocking letters.
Shortly before his move, the future of the Königsberg-born painter had looked promising. A double show in Braunschweig Castle with the Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers was even opened in February 1933, but was immediately closed again. A planned show in the renowned Berlin gallery Moeller had to be canceled. Branded as a degenerate, the Nazis immediately banned Cavael from painting and exhibiting.
By then, Cavael had already overcome a number of blows of fate; he was nine years old when his mother died. The older brother fell at the beginning of the First World War and he himself was buried on the Western Front. In the first years after the war he worked as a photographer, assistant director, cameraman and actor. It wasn’t until 1924 that a scholarship enabled him to study at the Frankfurt Art School. He concentrates on graphics and typography, experiments with photograms, designs idiosyncratic advertisements, including for BMW and Junghans, and works as a teacher at the Frankfurt vocational business school. In 1931, due to the rigorous austerity policies of Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, he was fired and moved to Berlin.
A collage on canvas from 1976.
(Photo: Galerie Maulberger/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023)
Points, lines and surfaces not only form the basis of his graphics, but are also the basis of his artistic work. Its geometric design language expands quickly. The exhibition shows how he breaks away from the constructivist motifs of his early days; Organic shapes and flowing lines already appear in the first oil painting from 1930.
The fact that he works abstractly from the start and is never interested in the figurative sets him apart from many of his colleagues. From an early age he became enthusiastic about the diversity of forms in nature, discovered abstract structures with the microscope and was fascinated by this hidden world. He dealt intensively with Kandinsky; the two met in 1931 at the Bauhaus in Dessau. They stay in touch and still write to each other when Cavael lives as a degenerate artist in Partenkirchen. His wife, a dietitian, opened a “vegetarian-dietetic rest home” there. He built a studio in the attic and painted and drew in secret, mostly smaller works on paper, so that he could hide them as quickly as possible.
This advertisement is a work from my early years as a student.
(Photo: Museum Aschenbrenner/VG-Bild-Kunst Bonn 2023)
That does not help. On December 6, 1936, the family home was searched. A bricklayer had denounced Cavael, not because of his art, but because of alleged communist agitation. Arrest, prison and, shortly before Christmas, transfer to the Dachau concentration camp. Letters to his wife, who is heavily pregnant with their second child, reveal deep feelings of guilt. He continues to draw relentlessly, sometimes only pictures the size of postage stamps.
He was acquitted in August 1937. But now he is on the list of enemies of the state and is not allowed to write letters abroad. Josef Albers, who emigrated to the USA, no longer receives an answer to his urgent recommendation that “it is worth giving up the old world”. In 1937, a friend smuggled a letter to Kandinsky in Paris in which Cavael reported that “the greatest misfortune in life that could ever befall a person of my disposition” had happened to him. Cavael is on his own when it comes to his art. He is also not allowed to work as a graphic artist because he is not a member of the Reich Chamber of Culture.
This work is from 1954 and is executed in mixed media on paper.
(Photo: Galerie Maulberger/VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2023)
Only after the end of the war did he manage to find a connection. Color becomes increasingly important in his pictures. The “Amoeba Pictures” that he painted from 1949 onwards are magnificent: organic forms that seem to float. This year he has his first solo exhibition at the Munich Modern Gallery Otto Stangl. Immediately after its opening, he founded the “Group of Objectless People” with Willi Baumeister, Gerhard Fietz, Rupprecht Geiger, Willy Hempel, Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff and Fritz Winter, which was later renamed “ZEN 49”.
Cavael noticeably follows the laws of music in his informal pictures and sets his lines, which for him have the character of melodies, neither by chance nor arbitrarily. Everything is in motion, nothing is static and rigid, the floating balance is perfect.
In 1954 the move to Munich finally happened, a relief for the whole family. And international success finally sets in, albeit with a long delay.
Rolf Cavael: Painting out of inner necessity, until November 5th, Museum Aschenbrenner, Loisachstraße 44, Garmisch-Partenkirchen