Behrens-Hangeler, Herbert

As the son of a gardener, Herbert Behrens-Hangeler grew up in Essen. Inspired by Wassily Kandinsky, he painted his first abstract work as early as 1916, thereby embarking on the path towards abstraction. After serving in the First World War, the wounded Behrens-Hangeler moved to Bielefeld. With his artists’ group Der Wurf, he helped introduce abstract art to the city for the first time. Two years before creating the still life, he decided to return to Berlin and became a member of the November Group. Shortly after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, his art was denounced as “degenerate”, and several of his works were burned in a railway goods wagon set alight by the SA (“Sturmabteilung”) in Kassel. Despite such hostility, in 1936 he exhibited abstract works together with Johannes Molzahn on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm. Alongside his artistic practice, he worked as a cameraman and colour-film specialist for Siemens & Halske and for Tobis-Film. Shortly before the end of the war, he evaded a call-up order by refusing military service and went into hiding. As an “abstract artist” in the GDR (East Germany), his Synthetic Cubism remained unwelcome even after the war. Critics accused him of creating art that served individual artistic expression rather than the interests of the socialist state. As a result, he chose to withdraw from the public art scene in the early 1960s.

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