The 18-year-old Frankfurt native Carla Brill began her training in 1924 in the preliminary class of the then Kunstgewerbeschule in Frankfurt, which was later merged with the Städelschule. After attending the class for free painting with the rather conservative Johann Vinzenz Cissarz, where she also met the later Beckmann student Georg Heck, Brill was accepted into Max Beckmann’s master class in 1927, which she left after just one year. Her friendships with her fellow students from this time remained with her even after her studies. In 1970/71, Brill created a portrait bust of her former colleague Georg Heck.
In 1928, she transferred to the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für Freie und Angewandte Kunst in Berlin to continue her painting studies with Karl Hofer, Emil Orlik and Hans Meid. From 1932, she turned to sculpture and studied for a year with Edwin Scharff and Wilhelm Gerstel, whose master student she became between 1939 and 1941. At the same time, Beckmann’s master class, which had existed until then, was dissolved and former fellow students were excluded from the public art scene.
During this time, Brill mainly created portraits and nudes. Thanks to the efforts of her teacher Gerstel, she received the prestigious Rome Prize for her sculptural work in 1942/43, which enabled her to study at the Villa Massimo in the Italian capital in 1944. During her absence, what many artists feared at the time happened in Berlin: Her studio was destroyed in the bombing raids and almost all of her previous work was lost. A file from the “Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda” (Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) contains documents on support from the “Künstlerdank” donation due to her destroyed studio.
After the war, she lived in Biberach an der Riß and in Bonn, where she worked as a freelance artist. She returned to Frankfurt in 1952. There she initially worked as a set and costume designer at the Frankfurt Theater and stopped her other artistic work. It was not until the 1970s that her circle of friends convinced her to resume her work. After her retirement, she once again created an extensive body of work that included painting, drawing and sculpture.
Unlike Beckmann and other of his students, Carla Brill was never directly excluded from the public art scene. Before, during and after the National Socialist era, she was able to take part in exhibitions at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 1928, 1942 and 1954. From 1941 to 1943, she continued to take part in exhibitions at the Prussian Academy in Berlin and finally received the prestigious Rome Prize in 1944.
After the war, she was able to exhibit works at the Hessian Secession in Kassel in 1946 and was part of the exhibitions “W. Gerstel und seine Schüler” in Karlsruhe in 1955 and “Max Beckmanns Frankfurter Schüler” at the Kommunale Galerie Frankfurt in 1980. As a member of the Berufsverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler Frankfurt e.V. and the Frankfurter Künstlergesellschaft, she was also shown in various solo exhibitions, for example in 1981 at the Allianz Insurance Company, Frankfurt, in 1982 at the Dresdner Bank Gallery, Frankfurt and in 1984 at the Dresdner Bank in Darmstadt.
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You can find a quotable version in our current exhibition catalog “Beyond Beckmann. From the Master Class to the Böhme Collection”, which is also available in our online store. For academic enquiries, please contact our museum team.
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