Kate Diehn-Bitt-no compromises

20 years ago, she was one of the artists who were in danger of being forgotten: Kate Diehn-Bitt, important representative of the new objectivity and one that always followed her own compass. And one that could never be anything else as a painter. Their creativity seems almost inexhaustible, the techniques of which it used. This impression gains who looks at the great retrospective that the Kunsthalle Rostock will dedicate on the occasion of its 125th birthday.

It is obvious that the “artist is” work show is shown in Rostock, because Dihn-Bitt spent most of its life in the Hanseatic city, and most recently it was recognized in the Kunsthalle in 2002 with a large exhibition. The current way presents a chronologically created overview of Diehn-Bitt’s total work-in the “interaction” with sculptures-mostly from wood-another Rostock artist: Susanne Rast, born 1962. The two fit together excellently when Rasts figures seem to be just as special characters as the many of Dihn-Bitt portrayed: who were tender, lost, confused and the other. rugged.

Rast also got to know the Diehn-Bitt, who died in 1978, when Elise Hedwig Käthe Bitt in Berlin, but already as a toddler to Bad Doberan near Rostock, where she initially lived with her freshly divorced mother with the extremely wealthy grandparents. Rast remembers the then over 70-year-old as a “impressive woman, with her cigarette tip, the deep voice”. And from the fact that she was fascinated by the painter’s intensive images from the start.

Rast remembers the then over 70-year-old as a “impressive woman, with her cigarette tip, the deep voice”.

There were circumstances that made it easier for Kate Diehn-Bitt to follow their calling. There was the well-off family, who financed her first drawing lesson as a 14-year-old. And then there was the love for Peter Paul Diehn, dentist and much older than the young woman, who was only 19 years old at the wedding and was a mother a year later. Diehn always promoted his wife’s artistic ambitions and financed her art studies in Dresden in a private academy from 1928. He also tolerated the love relationship that Kate in Dresden with Hans Sieger, son of her former drawing teacher. Her son Jürnjakob looked after Kate’s older sister Annemarie over long distances in the years.

It can therefore be assumed that these people so close to her recognized the exceptional appeal and supported her artistic path without reservation. However, the painter did not preserve all of this from the exclusion, which she increasingly found out at the beginning of the Nazi era. From 1935, shortly after a first larger exhibition, she had no more opportunities to present her art, which the Nazis defamed as “degenerate”. She is banned from a job and should not even officially acquire working materials such as colors and canvas.

As early as early 1934, a functionary of the “Fighter Association for German Culture” informed her that he rejected her art and recommends that “to subject her work to a strict self -criticism”. The man writes that she could do something, writes the man (his letter is documented in the appendix to the catalog). However, it must “Agreement from this pathological, completely floating artificial culture, which is completely floating in the intellect, which is completely separated from the real natural -bound.” In the »nat. Soz. State “is not a place for distant art”.

Dihn-Bitt continued to work, secretly supported by colleagues and friends. In the exhibition, several of their works created in the period after 1935 until the end of the war are fixed in elaborate “window frames” so that they can be viewed from both sides. The reason: The lack of material prompted her to paint the back of pictures.

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It is not particularly surprising that the Nazis did not like their works: they are strictly and clearly composed, the people depicted often do not seem particularly personable, rather cranky or rough or sad. The colors at this time: often covered, nothing brightly. In addition, self -portrayals such as the half act – at that time still in a woman in a woman and new – or that provocative androgyne “self -portrait as a painter” with a brush in her hand.

The latter is strikingly reminiscent of self -portraits by Otto Dix, who held a professorship and whose work she knew during her studies at the Dresden Art Academy. Dix was one of the first art professors released by the Nazis, later pictures were shown by him in the propaganda exhibition “degenerate art”. He also “hibernated” with the help of friends.

In her works until 1945, Dihn-Bitt states Rostock’s destruction by allied bombing, paints pictures of women in concentration camps that she knew about, but which she did not know from her own. In 1945 she suffered severe typhoid. She later survived and took part in the establishment of the Cultural Association of the GDR. As early as 1946, she was a co -founder of the Culture division at the Free German Trade Union Confederation (FDGB) and for the first time again represented in an art exhibition, in Dresden.

But soon she will be rejected: her work will be put on the stamp “not future -oriented and optimistic”. It was only in the 1960s that it was “discovered”, also by the efforts of the Rostock sculptor Jo Jastram (1928–2011), an instance-and father of Susanne Rast in GDR times. Incidentally, the Kunsthalle only wrongly did a wonderful retrospective on the occasion of its 90th birthday, the Kunsthalle only wrongly known.

Kate Diehn-Bitt, who always followed her own vomits, continued to work undeterred until her death in 1978 and, despite fragile health, almost continuously. Many portraits, but also countless pictures of the rough coastal landscape, were created. Interestingly, your work will always be colorful in the late years. She often made collages with colored paper, and felt and watercolor pencils are also used, as are pastel colors. Diehn-Bitt also created extraordinary landscapes and portraits with crayons, including a very touching double portrait of himself and Peter Paul Diehn from 1957.

She also repeatedly created collages with biblical motifs, such as Judith and Holofernes from the Old Testament or the wedding of Kana from the New Testament, where Jesus transforms water into wine. Also to see in Rostock: a series of large -format, partly brightly colorful paintings for Thomas Mann’s romantium “Joseph and his brothers”, adaptation of the Old Testament history of a favorite son who is betrayed and sold by his brothers and later rises to the government consultant and prophet in Egypt.

Good to know that interest in this artist is growing again in Germany and abroad. In the past two years there have been exhibitions in Denmark and in the renowned Viennese Leopold Museum. And her “self -portrait with orange” can currently be seen in New York and could therefore not be shown in Rostock.

Kunsthalle Rostock, Hamburger Straße 40, Tue – Sun, 11 am to 6 p.m., until April 21.