October 26, 2008 – February 15, 2009 ART UNLIMITED The exhibition-tours of Hanna Bekker vom Rath (1952-1967) Stadtmuseum Hofheim am Taunus Burgstr. 11, D-65719 Hofheim am Taunus, Germany “Art unlimited” shows some 60 artists with more than 140 objects that Hanna Bekker vom Rath had presented during her exhibition-tours of four continents as „ambassador of the arts”. It also exhibits some of her discoveries in the host- countries as well as her view on contemporary art of the 1950-1960s. After experiencing German dictatorship and World-War II hardly anyone understood the cultural loss Germany had suffered. Only a few individuals with courage and farsightedness were engaged in overcoming frontiers by the means of art. Hence intercultural dialogues and trialogues were still off sight and even more off mind. Mass-tourism, globalization and the word-wide-web were not even imaginable. A woman in her sixties traveling on her own was quite unseen. Starting as a painter and art-collector Hanna Bekker vom Rath was befriended with Ida Kerkovius, Alexej Jawlensky, Ludwig and Else Meidner, Ewald Mataré, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Emy Roeder in the 1920s –artists of German Expres-sionism. In the following decades non-figurative painters joined the circle: Willi Baumeister, Paul Fontaine, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Rolf Nesch, HAP Grieshaber, Günter Schulz-Ihlefeldt and Fritz Winter. During the Third Reich she had offered refuge to the “degenerated” artists in her “Blue House” in Hofheim near Frankfurt. In her studio in Berlin she showed secret exhibitions of these artists. In 1947 she founded a gallery in Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Kunstkabinett Hanna Bekker vom Rath. Here she also presented young artists: Francis Bott, Meret Eichler, Artur Fauser, Kurt Federlin, Fridolin Frenzel, Gerhard Hintschich, Carl- Heinz Kliemann, Reich an der Stolpe, Louise Rösler, Johanna Schütz-Wolff and Seff Weidl. The exhibition-tours intended to show German contemporary art abroad including the formerly forbidden artists: Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gramatté, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Otto Herbig, Adolf Hoelzel, Johannes Itten, Wassili Kandinsky, Max Kaus, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Käthe Kollwitz, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Franz Marc, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Otto Ritschl, Christian Rohlfs. She took their work to South- America, South Africa, India, Spain, the US, Mexico, Egypt, Greece, the Lebanon and Morocco. Hanna Bekker vom Rath combined her trips with re-meeting of exiled artists (Isidor Aschheim, Benno Elkan, Else Meidner, Henri Davring, Martin Bloch, Rolf Nesch) and tying new bands to artists of the host-countries. Works of Alexander Calder, Luigi Coppa, Renato Guttuso, Hans Platschek, Manuel Rivera, Luis Saez, Shalom Sebba and Alberto Giacometti were subsequently exhibited in her gallery. Hanna Bekker vom Rath also brought back some anonymous objects of tribal art which link works of “her” artists to the subject of this show: “Art unlimited”. http://www.hofheim.de/Themen/Kultur/Stadtmuseum/Ausstellungen/ .