Otto Mueller – Erich Heckel – Pablo Picasso. The Collection of Irmtraut Werner

The Werner collection coming up for auction this spring is extraordinary for a number of reasons. Not only does it bring together exceptional groups of works by the Brücke artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Otto Mueller and Max Pechstein as well as coloured-chalk drawings by Oskar Kokoschka – the collection is, above all, significant due to the un - usual story of its creation. It was initiated by Irmtraut Werner, who was born in the Saxon town of Frankenberg in 1922; after the end of the Second World War, she was hired as a secretary at Wilhelm Grosshennig’s gallery, which was originally located in Chemnitz. When he moved to Düsseldorf with his gallery in 1951, Werner followed him as his assistant, allowed herself to be inspired by his enthusiasm for expressionism and began building up her own collection of classic modern art. After Werner’s death in 2008, her daughter loaned the collection to the Albertina in Vienna, the most important museum in the world for the graphic arts. In 2012 highlights from her collection were shown in a highly regarded exhibition accompanied by its own catalogue.

By the time Wilhelm Grosshennig relocated to Düsseldorf on account of the complete destruction of his gallery space in Chemnitz in1945, he could already look back on almost 40 years of work as a gallerist. His new beginning in Kasernenstraße 13, on the first floor of the wellknown Conzen frame shop, was also linked with a shift in the artists he represented. Having formerly exhibited and traded in 19th-century works, he now turned to German expressionism as well as to the French artists Pablo Picasso, André Derain and Henri Matisse. As Klaus Albrecht Schröder, who served as director of the Albertina for many years, writes in the catalogue of the exhibition presenting the collection, Grosshennig’s gallery advanced to become “a linchpin in the market for French and German art of the late-19th and 20th century and mediated the redevel - opment and recovery of public art collections in West Germany” (Kirchner, Heckel, Nolde: Die Sammlung Werner, exh. cat. Wien 2012, p. 8). A substantial role in this success was played by Grosshennig’s naturally ambitious and interested young assistant Irmtraut Werner, who devel - oped herself into an art expert in the realm favoured by her employer. He gave her expressionist graphic works for her birthday and her daughter’s baptism to recognise her energetic support. These works would become the initial spark that set off the development of her own collection, which she still continued to pursue after she married the virtuoso violinist Ricardo Odnopossoff in 1965 and followed him to Vienna.

The nearly 20 years she spent working in the gallery were so formative that she was able to continue to collect with the help of her old connec - tions but, above all, with a sure eye for quality. At the same time, Irmtraut Werner always made an effort not to leave individual works isolated and to instead form graphic series – for example, in the case of Otto Mueller’s lithographs “Im Wasser stehendes und am Ufer sitzendes Mädchen” (Lot 173) and “Zwei Akte” (Lot 172) – which she completed with the help of the artist’s widow Maschka Mueller (née Meyerhofer). One of the high - lights of her collection is also by Mueller: the large-format watercolour “Großer liegender und kleine stehende Akte in Landschaft” (Lot 41). With this picture dated to 1925, Werner owned a characteristic work by the Brücke artist, who had been exploring the depiction of the nude – mostly boyish, young women in nature – since 1901. Standing or lying down, his figures are symbols of the paradisiacal state of humankind in a natural setting. Mueller also usually refrained from adding attributes to his fig - ures and only rarely revealed their physiognomies. Werner became familiar with Erich Heckel’s oeuvre through the 1965 exhibition “Erich Heckel: Gemälde aus den Jahren 1906-1960” at the Galerie Grosshennig. A selection of works from this show and other sources also found their way into her collection: these include the watercolours “Wolk - en am Meer” (Lot 168), “Frau vor Bäumen” (Lot 167) and “Südfranzösischer Hafen” (Lot 169), all of which were from the 1920s and reveal the artist’s broad thematic range.

During the years she spent at the side of the globally sought-after violinist Odnopossoff, she continued to keep herself informed about exhibitions, artists and current developments in art, and she cautiously expanded her collection through works by Maurice Estève, Alexander Archipenko, Henri Matisse and, above all, Pablo Picasso. From the latter she purchased one of his finest lithographs, the “Buste au corsage à Carreaux” (Lot 42), a 1957 depiction of his last life partner, Jacqueline Roque. Picasso uses his masterful and, as always, highly experimental handling of the different printing techniques to apply the chalk so broadly to the zinc plate that he attains “frottage” effects and creates an unusually painterly-looking graphic work, whose appeal is further enhanced by means of a fine needle. Overall, Werner brought together an exquisite collection that is surpris - ingly homogeneous in spite of its different artists. Although she initially scarcely possessed the – artistic, familial and material – prerequisites for this project, she succeeded in creating a cohesive and surprisingly vibrant collection to call her own.