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Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie

Painter and gallery owner Ruth Baumgarte died at almost 90 years

The famous painter and former gallery owner Ruth Baumgarte died on February 7, in her home in Bielefeld after a long illness.

Ruth Baumgarte in celebration of 30th gallery jubilee, 2005

Ruth Baumgarte, who came from an old theatrical family, was born in 1923 as the daughter of the boss and majority owner of the UFA film production companies Tobis Kurt Rupli in Coburg and grew up in Berlin. She received her first artistic training at the prestigious art school in the West by Emmy Stahlmann in Berlin. From 1940 until 1944 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin at the legendary professors Gerhard Ulrich, Michel, Tank, Franke and Wehlte and was awarded with several prizes for her special talent. During her studies she was permanently working on the Kaskeline-animation studios. Due to the evacuation of the university during World War II she went to Dresden, but left the city a few weeks before its destruction in 1945 and took refuge in a master\'s studio of the public industrial and art school Sonneberg in Thuringia. Shortly before the war, she returned to Berlin, and experienced first hand the destruction of Germany. Shortly after the war, the young artist quickly became press illustrator of the first German / Russian newspaper in order to earn her and her family\'s living thereof. Because of her first marriage to an artist coming from Bielefeld, she moved to West Germany.

Daily she drew for the Free Press published in Bielefeld, a predecessor of the Neue Westfälische. Even as a book illustrator she quickly made her mark and worked for a number of renowned German publishing houses. But since the late 1940s, she entered the art scene with increasing success, showing her freelance art works internationally. Numerous trips to distant lands from Persia to Africa inspired the artist for her work. Ruth Baumgarte\'s family has roots in the early 1950s in Bielefeld. In 1952 she married the industrialist Hans Baumgarte (died in 1999), former owner of the ironworks Baumgarte.

The painter Ruth Baumgarte with her husband, fabricant Hans Baumgarte, at the federal ball of german press in the 1970ies

Ruth Baumgarte at her atelier at the end of the 1960ies

Her daughter, Janine is a veterinarian, her son Alexander now is the sole owner of her 1986 co-founded international largely successful Samuelis Baumgarte Gallery and the subsequent further corporate art consulting branch. The Samuelis Baumgarte Gallery is follower from the known Bielefeld gallery "Das Fenster" ("The window"), established in the mid-1970s at the Artur-Ladebeck-Straße. The former features editor of the Neue Westfälische, Martin Bodenstein, wrote in his book "mimes, painters and mimosa": "Das Fenster" had a tiny seating area for enthusiasts who valued not on art comfort but comfortable art and concentrated on conversation with their creators. The legendary Galerie Ruth Baumgarte had "opened the stained glass windows of the province."

For her own art, especially for her dense, thematically focused Africa cycle, the artist first traveled in the 1950s and since the early 1980s, numerous times on the African continent and visited countries like South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya and the Sudan. Since 1985, she visited Africa almost once a year.

Ruth Baumgarte during a visit of the Massai, Tansania, at the beginning of the 1990ies

From pictorial travel notices she created large-format oil paintings, the symbiosis between African tribal culture and increasing industrialization and destruction of African rites. These works became more intense and deeper during the elaboration process in the studio, declared Ruth Baumgarte. Her pictures of this cycle, which includes numerous works showing Africans, individually or in groups in front, merging to landscape vision. But she composed scenes with glowing colors. "The sultry heat of Africa I can express only with these colors," said the artist. But what here dictates the need for representation and implementation of pictorial appear simultaneously as a homage to the vitality life in Africa. Ruth Baumgarte brought visual light and bright colors into the - from the European point of view - "dark continent", she gave him a soul.

Ruth Baumgarte in her atelier

Ruth Baumgarte\'s Africa cycle was internationally presented in museums, art associations, or at art fairs such as Art Cologne, FIAC, Arte Fiera Bologna, the art Karlsruhe or in world famous galleries such as Aberbach Fine Art New York, Galleria Giulia in Rome, the Fondation Veranneman or Frost & Reed Ltd. in London.

Ruth Baumgarte at her vernissage, Gallery Frost & Reed, London, 1992

Ruth Baumgarte with Gloria Argelés at her vernissage, Galeria Guilia, Rom, 1994

Invitation to the exhibition and vernissage Fondation Veranneman, Belgien, 1998

Ruth Baumgarte celebrating her vernissage in New York 2001 with Susan Aberbach, Aberbach Fine Art and her colleague Fran Dropkin

Ruth Baumgarte at her vernissage, Galeria Marieschi, Mailand, 2004 and with the Galerist Dr. Claudio Malberti and the german Kulturattaché Dr. Felix Klein

In spring 2012, the artist at the age of 88 years founded the Ruth Baumgarte Arts Foundation, administering their future artistic life\'s work and promoting an annual prize donated to a figurative working artist. The presidency of the Ruth Baumgarte Foundation will be hold by her son, the gallery owner and art dealer Alexander Baumgarte.

Letter of mourning

On the artist: Ruth Baumgarte

As an advisor of questions concerning contemporary art the Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie looks back on a thirty-five year-old tradition. Founded by Ruth Baumgarte in 1975, the business was reorganized in 1986 in second generation by Alexander Baumgarte in todays Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie. Since 1988, Alexander Baumgarte has been the exclusive President. The gallery is located in the heart of the Bielefelder city centre, opposite the city hall and the municipal theatre and offers more than 1000 square exhibition space.

The architecture of the building allows almost every kind of exhibition concept including painting, photography, installation and sculpture. A member of the "Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien e.V.", the gallery constantly exhibits artists of international contemporary art, Modernism and young experimental tendencies. Over 300 single and thematic exhibitions have been presented at the gallery in Bielefeld and at important art fairs such as the Art Cologne, art forum berlin, Arte Fierra Bologna or the Fiac in Paris. While the communication of established and young positions of art in the 20th and 21st century is an important aspect, the program is strongly focused on cross-media tendencies. Active support of artists in large exhibitions and the procurement to museums and institutions of art is a primary focus; this results from the self-conception as precondition and commitment.

Insights into the Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie (PDF)

Further insight: Die Kunst muss nichts, die Kunst darf alles. « Ernst Fischer