Segal, Arthur, 1875-1944

German painter and graphic artist.

From the description of Letter : Charlottenburg, to J.J.P. Oud, 1928 Oct. 2. (Getty Research Institute). WorldCat record id: 86093287

Anne Ratkowsi-Wanger was born Anneliese Ratkowski on March 3, 1903 in Berlin.

From 1920-1938, she was married to the painter Nikolaus Braun (born January 17, 1900 in Berlin; died 1950 in New York City). Her son, Andreas (later Andy Duncan-Brown), was born on Nov. 12, 1930 in Berlin.

Anne Ratkowski and Nikolaus Braun were members of the November Group (Novembergruppe), a loose union of radical artists, which was created in December 1918 in Berlin under the impression of the November revolution (other members included the painters Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee). Both burned their works before escaping Nazi Germany in 1938.

Anne Ratkowski went to Belgium, where she survived in hiding, and where she married Paul Wangenheim. After World War II, the couple emigrated to the United States and changed their name to Wanger. Anne Ratkowski settled in New York City.

Arthur Segal was born in Iaşi, Bukovina Province, Romania in 1875. As a member of an older generation of avant-garde artists, he was a teacher and mentor to Braun and Ratkowski. With them and several other artists he founded the November Group (Novembergruppe) of politically radical artists in Berlin, but he already had a long history in the Avant-Garde. He had namely already exhibited with the groups Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke, and had been a founding member of the Neue Sezession in Berlin; during the 1920s he showed work at the Cabaret Voltaire. He was also active as a teacher and wrote several books. Because of his Jewish background, he was no longer permitted to exhibit in Germany under Nazi rule, so he fled first to Mallorca and then to London. In London he set up an art school, and died there in 1944.

From the guide to the Anne Ratkowski-Wanger Collection, 1920-1994, (Leo Baeck Institute Archives)

Arthur Segal was born in 1875 in Iasi (Jassy), Romania. He left school early and went to Berlin, Munich and Paris to study painting. He was a co-founder of the "Neue Sezession" in Berlin (1910), a group of artists that included Emil Nolde and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff ("Die Bruecke"), whose paintings were rejected by the "Berliner Sezession." He also exhibited with artists of the group "Der blaue Reiter." From 1914 to 1920 Arthur Segal lived in Ascona, Switzerland, which proved to be a refuge for many artists at the time. In 1920 he moved back to Berlin, where he founded his own painting school in 1923.

A follower of impressionism and neo-impressionism at the beginning of his painting career, he approached a more expressionist style from 1910 to 1914, before sympathizing with Dadaism and finding his own style from 1915/1916 on. In the late 1920s, Segal became an advocate of naturalism and searched for the objective principles of painting (one of his book manuscripts is called: "The objective principles of painting," 1937). He was a member of the artist groups "Die Autonomen" and "Die Juryfreien," and served as director of the "Novembergruppe." In 1925 he rejected a teaching position at the New Bauhaus in Dessau. Besides his work as a painter, a painting teacher and his numerous functions in the artist community, Segal created woodcuts, wrote book-manuscripts, published numerous essays in art-journals ad newspapers, and gave lectures on the radio and live for various organizations. Following a ban on exhibiting his art, Arthur Segal left Germany in 1933 and moved to Mallorca, Spain. Later, he immigrated to London and succeeded in opening another painting school.

In addition to his work as an artist, Arthur Segal was interested in psychology and psychotherapy and conducted correspondence with many famous psychoanalysts and psychiatrists of the time. He especially researched the effects of painting in order to cure mental illnesses, and his attempts were acknowledged among psychologists and psychoanalysts alike.

Arthur Segal died in London in 1944.

From the guide to the Arthur Segal Collection, 1903-1987, (Leo Baeck Institute)