Theodor Rosenhauer
05.09.2025 - 18.10.2025
Bread, color, life: Theodor Rosenhauer's quiet poetry
GALERIE HANNA BEKKER VOM RATH
Opening: Friday, September 5, 2025, 7 p.m.
Galerie Hanna Bekker vom Rath is participating in the Saisonstart the Frankfurt Galleries Saisonstart (September 5-7, 2025) with a presentation of works by the painter Theodor Rosenhauer (1901-1996). Born in Dresden, he was a student of Ferdinand Dorsch at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. His work can be located between late impressionism, realism and naturalism. On display are still lifes, architectural and natural landscapes, portraits and genre paintings from the period 1935 to 1989.
Theodor Rosenhauer's artistic roots were based on the painterly networks in Dresden, where Carl Banzer, Robert Sterl and his teacher Ferdinand Dorsch conveyed and taught the trends of the Munich School of Painting, Trübner, Schuch and Leibl as well as French Realism from Courbet to Utrillo at the beginning of the 1920s. The young Rosenhauer studied Rembrandt and van Gogh in the Dresden painting collections. After studying at the Dresden Academy, he counted Oskar Kokoschka among his patrons and was friends with the Brücke Expressionist Peter August Böckstiegel. An appointment to the Dresden Academy of Art in 1934 was prevented by the National Socialists. The artist felt that the war effort from 1940 onwards was a waste of his life. On the night of the Dresden bombing in February 1945, Rosenhauer lost a large part of his early work, a traumatic loss that later made him reluctant to part with his paintings. In 1950, he traveled to the West, visited his brother in Offenbach and studied the art collections in Frankfurt, Kassel and Wiesbaden.
The art critics of the GDR were not squeamish about him: His paintings were considered "too gloomy" and "not forward-looking enough". Although he was awarded the Art Prize of the City of Dresden in 1956 for his 1955 painting "Nach dem Angriff" (After the Attack), it was not until 1968 that he had his first major solo exhibition at the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden. In the West, he was able to show 77 paintings at the Marburg University Museum in 1980.
Over the course of his long career, Rosenhauer never changed his late impressionist-realist painting style. The brittle surface texture of his oil paintings, which he executed with a brush and palette knife, is typical. His focus is on grey color valeurs. The Dresden artist's coloristic skill is not only evident in his treatment of the grey tones, but also in the way he achieves an "intrinsic glow" in colored areas. His palette will lighten with age.
Portraits, still lifes and landscapes: Theodor Rosenhauer was equally at home in all genres. The portraits, especially the portraits of children, captivate with their empathy for their subjects. The artist empathizes with his subject, one could speak here of a psychological late impressionism.
He always paints architecture from a carefully considered perspective. The still lifes - the 50 paintings with loaves of bread and the mushroom still lifes are famous - show how much value Rosenhauer attached to food. His oeuvre lives from an "iconography of duration, waiting and tranquillity" (Susanne and Klaus Hebecker). The winter paintings, as well as other landscapes, are created en plein air and often in adverse weather conditions.
Few monographs on Theodor Rosenhauer were published during his lifetime, which also has to do with the fact that he himself was very critical of reproductions of his paintings. He refused to sell his works to private collectors and at most gave them away. In 1968, the artist depicted himself in a white turtleneck sweater, black jacket and with a serious look: Great modesty, humility, constancy and the ascetic way of life that increased with age were his hallmarks, as his son Stefan characterized him.
Theodor Rosenhauer, Girl with paper crown and fan, 1962, oil on canvas, 80.5 x 66 cm
Galerie Hanna Bekker vom Rath
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