The "Schmelz" and The New Frankfurt
05.09.2025 - 19.10.2025
Ella Bergmann-Michel, Ilse Bing, Walter Dexel and Robert Michel
Galerie Eric Mouchet | joint exhibition with edition & galerie hoffmann
On the occasion of the Bund Das Neue Frankfurt's centenary, edition & galerie hoffmann is participating as part of the Frankfurt Art Experience, the Frankfurt gallery's season opening for the first time. In a temporary exhibition at Goetheplatz 1 and in collaboration with Galerie Eric Mouchet, Paris, the gallery will show works by Ella Bergmann-Michel, Ilse Bing, Walter Dexel, and Robert Michel. Four artists who were involved in various roles as part of the reform and urban planning movement Das Neue Frankfurt (New Frankfurt).
Ella Bergmann-Michel founded the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Unabhängigen Film (Working Group for Independent Film) as part of the Bund Das Neue Frankfurt, Ilse Bing documented housing projects photographically, and Walter Dexel and Robert Michel were commissioned by Ernst May to develop concepts for advertising and communication design.
The artists knew each other, not least through meetings at the Schmelzmühle in Eppstein-Vockenhausen in the Taunus, the home, studio, and workplace of Bergmann-Michel and Michel, and a meeting place for international pre-war avant-gardes. The so-called “Schmelz” or “Heimatmuseum of Modern Art” was equally the site where the “Ring Neuer Werbegestalter” (Ring of New Advertising Designers) was founded in 1927, which included Bergmann-Michel, Michel, and Dexel, as well as Willi Baumeister, Max Burchartz, César Domela, Kurt Schwitters, Jan Tschichold, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, among others.
In addition to works on paper by Ella Bergmann and Michel, the exhibition features advertising graphic design by Michel, as well as the silent short films “Wo wohnen alte Leute?” (Where Old People Live) (1931) and “Wahlkampf 1932/Letzte Wahl” (Election Campaign 1932/Last Election) (1932) by Bergmann-Michel. Two artist-portfolios, which edition hoffmann realized in collaboration with Dexel and Michel in the early 1970s and 1980s, are also on display. Furthermore, photographs by Ilse Bing documenting the Budge-Heim retirement home and the Hellershofsiedlung.
With the growing influence of ultra-conservative right-wing and National Socialist forces in the early 1930s, Das Neue Frankfurt came under pressure and was eventually suppressed. May, like many others involved, emigrated. Dexel, on the other hand, dedicated his research on everyday utensils, which he had begun in 1925 in a constructivist departure from the authorial artistic subject, to “German craftsmanship,” which secured his professional career in the Nazi era. Bergmann-Michel and Michel's artistic work was banned from exhibition in 1933 and categorized as “degenerate.” They subsequently retired to the Schmelzmühle, where Michel ran a fish farm. Bing left Frankfurt for Paris in 1930 and, as a Jewish person, was forced to flee via Marseille to New York in 1940.
Against the backdrop of the accelerating normalization of traditionalist, authoritarian-libertarian, and ethno-nationalist politics 100 years after the founding of Das Neue Frankfurt, the modernist and social reformist positions of the artists on display can serve as a reminder that their work was intended to contribute to the building of democracy in the Weimar Republic, beyond aspirations for artistic autonomy.
Together with the Galerie Eric Mouchet, which represents the Bergmann-Michel estate, we are pleased to present works by Ella Bergmann-Michel, Ilse Bing, Walter Dexel, and Robert Michel at Frankfurt's season opening. edition & galerie hoffmann's founders, Adelheid Hoffmann and Hans-Jürgen Slusallek were friends of Bergmann-Michel and Michel for many years.
Works by César Domela and Julius Stahl will equally be part of the exhibition.
Pop-up exhibition spaceat the Saisonstart
Joint exhibition edition & galerie hoffmann and Galerie Eric Mouchet
Goetheplatz 1
60313 Frankfurt am Main