Born in the 1880s in the surroundings of Dresden (ex-GDR), Karl Waldmann disappeared with his Russian partner around 1958 in a Soviet labour camp. He is one of the last discoveries of constructivism and undoubtedly one of its most important.

At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a journalist and true art lover was visiting the famous 'Polish market' in Berlin. Standing out in the crowd of merchants squatting down on the muddy ground, one of the salesmen caught his attention. Indeed this salesman had spread out his goods on the platform at the back of his van, a model from the Forties which had been brought on site and uncovered. High up above the crowd was displayed a mishmash of porcelains which seemed to have come straight from a museum, as well as tables, curios and boxes of caviar. The content of his stall was besieged by foreigners: Europeans, Asians and Americans were all keen to visit Berlin at that time.
Indeed the fall of the Wall gave way to an important East-West migration, giving Eastern migrants the opportunity to make a little money by selling various objects (watches from the army, badges, military tools, Russian cameras, caviar boxes, antiques, symbols of the regime, etc). The journalist found some "glued papers", concealed in a folder of brown cardboard and apparently inspired by Russian constructivism. The works were signed with the initials: K.W. As the journalist manifested his interest, the salesman suggested that he come back in the late afternoon so as to join him on his trip to Dresden, where he would show him some more pieces.

Thus, in the dark of the night they arrived in a studio in the suburbs of Dresden. Lit only by the few dusty rays of a lightbulb, one could see a spectacle of art works inspired by German and Polish romanticism and expressionism. Also on display there were many types of porcelain, some from Meissen and others profoundly modernist in its inspiration, as sell as art déco from the "state-owned factory of the USSR" (sic). Unfortunately, the signatures were in Cyrillic and hence illegible for the journalist. He believed - correctly - that the works had been 'removed' from a museum and hence he remained understandably cautions... In a corner, a large number of works from Karl Waldmann were piled up, yet the salesman did not pay real attention to them as he was primarily interested in selling his porcelains.
However, when asked about Karl Waldmann, he would not reveal anything of substance, just that he was an old uncle. And to this he would add: "Ach ya der Verrückt" (the madman) and would very briefly describe his disappearance with a woman, a Russian artist: "It happened a long time ago, they left everything". The man was rather taciturn when questioned on this distant relative. He did not see any reasons for this journalist and potential customer to inquire further into the life of this "Waldmann". The journalist made an appointment for the month of February at the Curator Hotel of Berlin, where he acquired the whole collection. Some of Waldmann's works were immediately displayed in Strasbourg at a large exhibition supported by the Ministry of French Culture: Berlin-Berlin (February 1990).

This discovery was to remain relatively confidential until the year 2000 when the new owner of the art works, enchanted by their richness, began looking for a Gallery that would exhibit them. Thereafter, the Gallery's in depth research made it possible to find works in Germany, in the area of Dresden; in Italy, in Belgium, in the USSR, in Ukraine, and in the USA. Today, more than 900 works dating from as early as 1915 to 1950-1960 have been inventoried, thus bearing testimony to a fantastic iconographic richness. During investigations, it was found that most of the works could be traced back to Dresden.
Naturally, from 2001 onwards the objective of the research had been to trace the merchant who, having a direct family bond with the artist, would be able to provide the information that the journalist had not sought to obtain eleven years earlier. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to find this studio in the surroundings of Dresden and to this day, all attempts in this direction have remained fruitless. Furthermore, it is very likely that the merchant has meanwhile deceased considering that he was already a man of age in 1989.

It should also be noted that following the inventory in 1989, the identity of the artist has been clearly confirmed. Indeed some of his art works are signed in full letters 'Karl Waldmann', although the majority of them are only marked with the initials 'K.W.' Did the artist intentionally cover up his name? Anyone having resided in the East at that time would know that a signature or even a date carried a potential danger to one's safety, and that the recourse to pseudonyms was very common. To create or to own an art work that did not possess the regime's approval implied being excluded from the official artistic circles. Moreover, an art work that conveyed a political criticism of the regime or that conveyed a dubious artistic motivation (such as eroticism) represented a real threat for the artist. A more recent example is that of the Czech photographer Jan Saudek, whose work contained a pornographic component: he decided to date his photographs 100 years earlier than their actual completion, thus enabling him to pretend that he had just found them...
Hence the gallery now holds - photographed works included - more than 900 photomountings, gouaches and various sets of an extremely authentic quality with a perfect sense of construction and a pallet of tones which clearly distinguishes Karl Waldmann from Schwitters, Heartfield, Haussmann or Rodchenko - and yet it is possible to find similarities in some of their topics.

To this day, we do not hold any more thorough information on Karl Waldmann's life and personality. In all probability, Karl Waldmann was not a public artist who claimed his belonging to any School, and would never have liked to define himself as such for existential and political reasons.
The fact that we possess so little information about him is far from being a single case in the German art of the time; as a matter of fact, the epoch abounds in similar cases. We can take the example of Else Laster- Scüler (a German poet from the beginning of the twentieth century) for whom it is hardly easy to put forward even the draft of a biography given the little amount of dates and facts that are known. Not only did the Nazis destroy the greatest part of the documents relating to her, but also, her witnesses and friends have almost all disappeared. There was little chance that one could produce committed art in the ex-GDR under the Nazis, and later on under the Soviet regime which would last until 1989. Numerous artists from this area will remain forever unknown, having produced their art in the secrecy of their art studio. The post-war period and the Cold War ultimately locked Eastern intellectuals away and this cult of secrecy still exists today. Thus the very same day the Wall came down, hundreds of art studios were discovered by journalists and other art lovers, relayed by word of mouth and providing many American collectors with blissful days.
There is another example worth being quoted, from a different field of art history altogether: that of the "disappearance" of the erotic cabinet of Catherine II of Russia (cfr the film of Peter Woodisch). Several people have testified to its existence and yet it vanished after 1945. Today, that is to say 50 years later, it is still extremely difficult to find reliable information from direct witnesses or current curators, so much so that some claim that this cabinet, however real, is nothing but yet another legend.
Though there is a lack of substantial biographical evidence on Karl Waldmann, we are nevertheless dealing with a very beautiful collection of impressive quality that requires a thorough analysis. Indeed through comparisons and associated researches, one could draw up an 'identikit' of the artist's spirit. To the historian or curator who feels concerned with the biographical canvas, I would answer that we possess the works and that the importance lies in understanding them, admitting them and showing them even if knowledge of the artist's life remains partial or subjective for the time being.

The work

The work of Karl Waldmann is rather varied and never stems from one movement alone. His youth works are abstract compositions and while asserting their uniqueness, they can be compared to collages from Kurt Schwitters and to the first collages of Rodchenko or Maiakowski: they all use bits of newspapers, papers, advertising labels, fabrics, and they evoke art movements that just preceded suprematism. One has to keep in mind that K. Schwitters also resided in Dresden between 1913 and 1917 and that this city used to be a place for artistic creation, as well as a place of transit for both German and Russian artists. This is also the place where the great ethnographic museum was situated, the museum which inspired the artistic return to primitive forms (Cfr Kirchner and Heckel). This observation is quite relevant given that several of Waldmann's photomountings use 'Negro statues' and incorporate the primitivist rhetoric developed by the critic Carl Einstein in 1915. Thus through his ethnographic eye on both the form and the subject, Karl Waldmann too provides a junction between Modern art and primitive sculpture.
Following this abstract period, Waldmann's work rapidly found its inspiration in constructivist, dadaïst and even sometimes surrealist art forms. He dedicated himself exclusively to photomounting, the invention of which had been attributed to Raoul Hausmann in 1922. The epoch was vibrant; caught between the chaos of World War One and the revolution, between the hesitations and the violence of the Weimar Republic, when Nazism began to emerge and when the October Revolution triumphed in the USSR. Karl Waldmann was undoubtedly a fellow of the 1917 revolution and had a thorough knowledge of the Russian artists who joined it: Rodchenko, Maiakowski, Lissitsky, Malevitch, Klusis, etc. As opposed to Heartfield, he was never 'propagandist' in his works, which is why the meaning of several of his photomountings escapes the contemporary eye. On the contrary, he revealed himself as a great observer and denouncer. The artist would see, listen, read; then he would illustrate through his collages his conception of politics, society and art (film, literature, theatre, etc....). Knowledge of all of these fields - artistic, cultural, political - is of primary importance for an intimate perception of Karl Waldmann's collages.

The themes

Just like for German expressionists, Karl Waldmann particularly cherished the theme of the city; a city where modernity is defined by the presence of factories, chimneys, buildings, high-risers, and smoke; a city of metal that penetrates people's body; a city of goddess, enchanting and malefic at once. Contrary to the Futurists, Karl Waldmann puts modernity on display in order to fear it and to denounce it. He makes a fool of it, of 'prosperity' and of the worth of the ‘electricity fairy'. The city and the machine are both seen as criminal and evil entities. Like other artists from his generation he was fascinated by America, which is why many of his works refer to the city of New York where one will find 'airship', 'crane', 'arm', 'electric chair' - all ancestors of Andy Warhol's art. The colours most frequently employed are black and red, the colours of death and blood.

This vision of the city and the machine should be linked with another recurrent topic in Karl Waldmann's work: cinema. The connection with Fritz Lang is evident in several works (Métropolis, M), as well as with Charlie Chaplin from Modern Times, from City Lights or The Great Dictator. One can see actresses, especially American actresses, surrounded by metal or by various types of smoke like perfect Constructivist icons: Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Ruby Keeler, Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Brigitte Heim, etc. These women of powerful magnetism highlight Karl Waldmann's passion for cinema. This presence of exceptional cinematic beauties in Waldmann's art only reinforces another recurring topic, that of the "woman" in general. The woman is present everywhere (in 300 inventoried works out of 900), like an ambitious necessity taking part in the unique adventure of each photomounting. Other women, more discreet or more subtle, appear in other works.
The woman is presented as a beauty embodiment, as a propaganda tool, as being 'used' by both the Nazis and the communist regime, as a formatted icon of either the tradition or the revolution. A woman that is very often surrounded by wheels as though she was what made the world go round, or as though she should be the one to make the world go round, instead of dictators. One should not believe, however, that Karl Waldmann put the Nazi and the communist regimes on an equal footing, quite the contrary. Yet this topic of woman that structures his work in its totality, can be found in every topic evoked here and thus also in the political content of his works at large.

If everything is not "strictly" political in Karl Waldmann, one should however read all his work through a large political and cultural perspective. Indeed Karl Waldmann was a committed artist primarily engaged on the side of anti-nazis. Several works thus condemn Hitler and Nazi dignitaries, and make fun of racial selection with a lot of cynicism. They point to the apocalypse to come and to the chronicle of the impending Shoah. Some post-war works actually illustrate the Shoah in an ice-cold construction. Everything that made the glory or the horror of the Nazi regime (body-building, the music, Wagner, Siegfried, architecture, the machine and war cinema, the final solution, Hannah Reich, racial medicine, etc) burst out in constructions of an architectural precision. Like Hannah Hoch, Karl Waldmann uses animals from a dadaïst perspective to incite criticisms. Monkeys are present everywhere as poor primates who do not think and whom the artist relates to the Nazis. One should also ask, however, whether the animal symbolizes the poor primate stripped out of words or if - quite on the contrary - it cleverly suggests an invitation to return to primitive consciousness...
But this Nazism, denounced by Karl Waldmann, has a deeper origin: that of order and cleanliness or even hygiene, of body and spirit, wrongly interpreted by the regime in question - thus leading us to the topic of hygiene in Karl Waldmann.

As soon as 1912, a museum of Hygiene opened in Dresden and still exist today. From the beginning of the century alternative medicine had become fashionable: sea and sulphur bathings, sanatorium providing cares, body-building... Several photomountings evoke this notion of hygiene. In 1930, a great exhibition on this topic took place in Dresden in this museum. The Russian house is organized by Lissitsky. The current Museum holds almost no more documents on this exhibition (the Town of Dresden having been demolished in 1945) and several of Karl Waldmann's photomountings illustrate it using the logos of the time. This concept of hygiene, understandably, was diverted by the Nazi regime so as to lead to a hygiene of the race. On a photomounting Karl Waldmann has written 'Normal Child'; the work shows a blond child on one side, the Hottentot Venus (a black woman who had been exhibited in Paris) on the other, at the centre: Adolf Hitler.

Several works denounce this 'medicine' and this selection, often using the example of black women. There is in Waldmann a connection between the Jew and the coloured person, as illustrated by their representation with horns on their forehead (like an okapi or an elephant's tusk), recalling those of Moses: indeed from the fifteenth century onwards and following a bad translation of the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, Moses has been shown with horns while receiving the law (cfr the sculpture by Michelangelo). Asking a Jew where he has put his horns has become an antisemitist remark, because of the representation of the Devil in Christian iconography.
One also finds the theme of hygiene, partly related to the body cult, in his criticism of the Soviet regime; a regime where parade and cult of the personality obliterate individuality and socialism. In his criticism of socialism, Karl Waldmann can be compared to Rodchenko who, in spite of being an official artist of the regime, never reached the 'supreme status' of other Soviet artists because of his personal opinions. Rodchenko liked the circus and stunts, and in 1939 he wrote: 'In the end, maybe the country of socialism needs neither ventroloquist, nor conjurer, nor juggler, nor magic carpet, nor firework, nor planetarium, nor flower, nor kaleidoscope". He wondered whether his country offered space only for politics and propaganda, the themes of which had been imposed from 'above', so that there was no space left for joy, stunts, light and movements! This vision of things, this boldness, this generosity and insolence that we find, not only in Rodchenko, but also in Maiakowsky and Karl Waldmann. The latter evoked the poet - who killed himaself in 1930 - in many of his works. although Karl Waldmann was sympathetic to the revolutionary ideal, he was nevertheless ironic about the revolution itself and the way it evolved. A photomounting thus shows us the criminal report sheet of Stalin, who was arrested in 1907 for a bank robbery, with Al Capone sniggering above his head. Such a photomounting explains to us why this 'madman', this Karl Waldmann was sent to a labour camp.
Maybe there was also in this Karl Waldmann, as noted by an enthusiast of his work, a desire to femininize socialism, and hence again we come back to the theme of the woman. A photomounting reveals a woman painting Lenin's mouth with red lipstick; yet at the same time this highly mechanised woman is wearing an iron glove (or a glove made of thick fabric) that hygienically isolates her from Lenin's mouth.
Karl Waldmann's works explore many other themes: historical events, references to novels and poetry, women that he met, in partical 'this dear Hannah...' that he evokes at the beginning of a notebook containing 20 photomountings; or Saharet, a cabaret singer in Berlin in 1930. It is rather difficult to cite everything, given both the richness of the work and the fact that no in depth study has yet been made of it. Some will talk about a 'mysteriousness' concerning Karl Waldmann, as many of his works remain completely enigmatic. This is due to a lack of explanation or indication from the author as to its significance; I would rather talk about his collected work as a 'novel', structured like an essay on the madness of the twentieth century.