Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1878 Münster, Germany

Died: 1937 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1933

Biography

Art dealer and gallerist, Alfred Flechtheim was born into a Jewish merchant family in Münster, Germany, in 1878. He attended the Château du Rosey business school in Rolle, Switzerland, until 1897, after which he completed his professional training in business management in Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and Münster. He then served in the Düsseldorf Uhlan light cavalry regiment from 1901 to 1902. Following his uncle's death in 1902, and at his father's request, Flechtheim joined the family company, M. Flechtheim, as a partner. Around 1906, he began collecting contemporary art and, from 1910, the year of his marriage to Betti Goldschmidt, he travelled frequently to Paris to acquire paintings by French Impressionist and avant-garde artists. Wilhelm Uhde, a Prussian collector living in the French capital, introduced Flechtheim to prominent figures within the Paris art world, most notably the German dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Subsequently, Flechtheim became one of Kahnweiler's most loyal clients and one of the foremost collectors of the work of Pablo Picasso before the First World War. In 1912, he organised the Sonderbund in Cologne, a groundbreaking exhibition that brought together, for the first time in Germany, all the major European contemporary avant-garde groups and art movements (Expressionism, Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, Fauvism, Cubism).

Following the bankruptcy of the family business, Flechtheim turned his passion for art into a successful business with the assistance of prominent German Jewish art dealer Paul Cassirer. In 1913, Flechtheim opened a gallery in Düsseldorf with another associate, Hans Fehr. During the First World War, Flechtheim and Fehr both enlisted, and the latter was killed, tragically ending their enterprise. However, during the postwar boom, Flechtheim reopened his gallery in Düsseldorf and, from 1921, had branches in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Vienna. In 1923, Flechtheim and his wife moved to Berlin, where he played an important role in disseminating German and French contemporary art. However, due to the financial crisis of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, he was eventually forced to close all his galleries. Following the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933, he was refused membership of the Reich's Chamber of Fine Arts because of his Jewish origins, making it impossible for him to continue his business.

Flechtheim immigrated to London via Basel and Paris in late 1933 after having safely shipped part of his collection abroad. The works that remained in his Berlin flat were subsequently seized by the German Reich. Despite having neither a permit for permanent residency nor a work permit in England, he succeeded in making a new start in the London art world. In 1934, he began working at the Mayor Gallery, whose directors, Douglas Cooper and J. F. Duthie, worked closely with Kahnweiler at Galerie Simon in Paris. Flechtheim travelled frequently between London and Paris, organising successful exhibitions at Agnew's Gallery, Leicester Galleries, and Mayor Gallery featuring works by André Derain, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Francisco Borès y Togores among others. In 1935 he curated an exhibition featuring fellow refugee, photographer,Gerty Simon: Portraits of Painters at the Camera Club, London, followed by, In 1936, Masters of French 19th-Century Painting for the New Burlington Galleries. Bringing together 125 loans, mainly from the prestigious Rothschild, Spencer-Churchill, and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy private collections, and from distinguished private lenders such as Kenneth Clark, the show represented Flechtheim's breakthrough in the London art establishment. Opened by the French Ambassador and visited by personalities such as Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, Arthur Leigh Ashton (later director of the Victoria and Albert Museum), Anglo-French actress, Yvonne Arnaud, and Anglo-French painter Paul Maze, the show was hugely successful, with over 35,000 visitors.

After only a short period in exile in London, following complications from diabetes and the amputation of a leg, Alfred Flechtheim died in St Pancras Hospital, London, England, on 9 March 1937, with his wife at his side. He was buried in Golders Green Jewish Cemetery. The same year, Flechtheim’s name was defamed by anti-Semitic propaganda promoting the Nazi-organised Entartete Kunst travelling exhibition of so-called 'degenerate' art, which featured modern artworks removed from Germany’s state museums. Part of his estate was auctioned the following year in London and Amsterdam. In 1941, his wife took her own life in Berlin, following notice of her imminent deportation.

Although Flechtheim’s archives were lost during the war, his influential role as an art collector and dealer has now been rediscovered, in conjunction with debates on the restitution of unlawfully confiscated artworks (O'Donnell, 'Heirs of Nazi-Persecuted Art Dealer Alfred Flechtheim Sue Bavarian Museums'). In 2017, his contribution to the dissemination of French and German modern art was explored in the exhibition Alfred Flechtheim. Modernism’s Art Dealer held at the Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin. In 2019 Flechtheim featured in the exhibition, Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who transformed the British Art World , hosted by Sotheby's London, as part of the Insiders/Outsiders festival. In summer 2024, Alfred Flechtheim featured in Ben Uri's exhibition, Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London. In the UK public domain, the National Gallery Archive in London holds correspondence and press cuttings referencing Alfred Flechtheim.

Related books

Ambre Gauthier, 'Promoting Modernism in the 1920s: The Art Journals of Paul Guillaume, Léonce Rosenberg, and Alfred Flechtheim', in Christel H. Force, ed., Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850-1950 (Bloomsbury Visual Arts: London, 2020), pp. 91-100
Jeffrey Meyers, 'Hemingway & Alfred Flechtheim', New Criterion, Vol. 34, Fasc. 10, June 2016, pp. 86-90
Andrea Bambi and Axel Drecoll, Alfred Flechtheim: Raubkunst und Restitution (Berlin, Germany & Boston, Massachusetts: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015)
Ottfried Dascher, Rudolf Schmitt-Föller and Alfred Flechtheim: Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger (Wädenswil: Nimbus, 2011)
Cordula Frowein, 'German artists in war‐time Britain', Third Text, Vol. 5, No. 15, 1991, pp. 47-56
Malcolm Gee, Dealers, Critics, and Collectors of Modern Painting: Aspects of the Parisian Art Market between 1910 and 1930 (London: Garland, 1981)
Ivor Churchill, 'Mr. Alfred Flechtheim', The Times, 11 March 1937, p. 18

Public collections

National Gallery Archive

Related organisations

Flechtheim Gallery (director)

Selected exhibitions

Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2024)
Brave New Visions: The Émigrés Who Transformed the British Art World, Sotheby's, London (2019)
Alfred Flechtheim. Modernism’s Art Dealer, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin (2017)
Masters of French 19th-Century Painting (curator), New Burlington Galleries, London (1936)
Francisco Borès y Togores and Fernand Léger (exhibition organiser), Leicester Galleries, London (1936)
André Derain (exhibition organiser), Agnew's Gallery, London (1936)
Gerty Simon: Portraits of Painters (curator), Camera Club, London (1935)
Auguste Renoir (exhibition organiser), Agnew's Gallery, London (1935)
Paul Klee (exhibition organiser), Mayor Gallery, London (1934)
Sonderbund or Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler (organiser), Städtische Ausstellungshalle, Cologne (1912)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Alfred Flechtheim]